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x 


LOW BRIDGE 
AND PUNK PUNGS 

























Sing squats four of the folks down at the table 
frontispiece. Seepage 94. 












LOW BRIDGE 
AND PUNK PUNGS 

BY 

SAM HELLMAN 

t\ 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 

TONY SARG n? 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
1924 
















1'h 

'JS-r 


Copyright , 1923,1924, 
By Sam Hellman. 


All rights reserved 


Published September, 1924 



Printed in the 



of America 


VP12W' 1 V 


©CIA 800831 V 



♦ r< 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Low Bridge. i 

High Bridge.35 

Eight Clubs, Doubled.69 

Punk Pungs.81 











































r 


' 































ILLUSTRATIONS 


Sing squats four of the folks down at the table 

Frontispiece 

PAGE 


“Four no trumps,” says I. “Let’s keep out the 
grocery clerks”.26 

I loses all commands to myself and flops the cards 
face up on the table.32 

“Hello,” he says, jovial. “How’s the old low- 
down buzzard bird?”.44 

I walks out with him, the lad looking back all the 
times at Lizzie.108 









- 




































































































' 









• If. 













i 

, 

t • ' 





















- 











































Ii 









' V I 


















LOW BRIDGE 


I 

W HEN me and my egg-scrambler 
teams up in the better-or- 
worser monologue, back in 
them days when the marriage ceremonies 
was considered, anyways, serious enough to 
call for a clean shave and your other shirt, 
the light of my life pulls this one on me 
after we is alone at last. 

“Honey,” says she, “like other couples 
maybe we will have some tiffs and spats 
in our wedding careers. Let’s you and me 
make a agreement that no matter how sore 
we is, if ever, we won’t never fail to kiss 
each other good night.” 

“Me get sore at you!” I comes back. 
“They ain’t no more chances of me and 
you having spats than they is of me wearing 
’em.” 

“Maybe no,” says the bride of a hour, 

i 


Low Bridge 


“but Lizzie Magruder done it, and it works 
wonderful. She and Jim gets along lovely, 
because you can’t keep up no fight after you 
has been kissed, can you?” 

“You don’t compare me with that 
planked shad, does you?” I wants to know, 
indignant. “I don’t need no agreements to 
tell me how to treat no wives, and I won’t 
make none.” I finishes up kinda strong, 
figuring this time was no worser than any 
other for showing who is the mister of the 
house. 

The agreement turns out to be the ace 
in the domestical deck. We ain’t hardly 
back from having our pictures took in rain¬ 
coats at Niagara Falls when we gets into a 
fuss about some triffle and in about five 
minutes I get wised up to what a lotta bums 
my family is. I curve a pretty fair insult 
myself, and in a little while her folks is 
down in the gutter with mine, hiding out 
from the coppers. The next act in the row 
is a dumb show, and from supper to hay 
time they ain’t enough words passed be¬ 
tween me and the wife to take up half a 
line in the lexington. 

2 


Low Bridge 

When she starts for her own room I 
looks kinda curious, but she’s a sport. She 
holds ’em up, and I obliges, and the humors 
of kissing after what we been pulling makes 
us both bust out laughing. After that they 
ain’t nothing to do but pass the buck about 
who begun the trouble, me insisting it’s my 
fault and she taking the versa-visor. I 
finally wins by calling myself a brute and 
a caddy, and the missis letting it go at that, 
without no more objections. 

In the next ten years we has plenty of 
run-ins about this and those and them, and 
me and my family is kept hopping in and 
outta the frying pan, but the kiss racket 
still hits on all four lips, and they ain’t 
never no morning hangovers to the insult 
souses of the day before. Me and the old 
lady is getting along as well as could be 
suspected when some cuckoo that ain’t had 
no luck filling bob-tailed flushes springs a 
new game to get even with the guys that’s 
been trimming him, by busting up their 
families. It’s like waving a red flag, so he 
calls it auction. 

I hears lots about this bridge and the wife 

3 


Low Bridge 


takes a flyer at it, but personally I think it’s 
the bunk, being a kinda combination of five 
hundred, a four-cornered debate and a 
coroner’s inquest. Anyways, I ain’t got no 
use for no game where you got to have the 
papers to win and where you can’t do no 
scientific bluffing; besides, how could it be 
worth a whoop if the frails could play it 
good? 

“Listen here,” says my lady friend one 
night. “Know why we ain’t invited out no 
more?” 

“I ain’t noticed no smallpox signs on my¬ 
self,” I answers, “but I’ll give an imitation 
of a fish for you. Why?” 

“Because you don’t play bridge,” she 
snaps. 

“That’s only fifty per cent, of it, Katie 
dear,” I comes back. “No game that 
a half-witted maroon is a champ at is 
gonna get a fall outta your favorite hus¬ 
band.” 

“You talking about me?” busts out the 
frau. 

“Who said you played good?” I asks. 
“Didn’t you tell m3 the other day that 
4 


Low Bridge 

that Magruder hen was a curly she-wolf at 
the pastimes?” 

“She’s a wonderful player,” admits the 
missis, “and so is Jim.” 

“That’ll be all,” says I. “Lizzie ain’t 
got enough sense to pour water outta 
pitcher that ain’t got no bottom. Anything 
she’s strong on, I’m off of.” 

“She’s strong on food,” shoo-ts back 
Katie, “so I guess you’ll go on a hungry 
strike, huh? How much brains do you 
have to use up to lose all the times at poker, 
anyways?” 

“I ain’t had such good breaks lately,” I 
replies, “but watch my smoke.” 

“I been inhaling it for ten years,” sneers 
the wife, “but I ain’t seen no fire yet, unless 
you count that job they pulled out from 
under you last year.” 

That’s a mean jab and calls for a snappy 
come-back. I pulls it and I can see Katie 
getting ready to drag my family in by the 
ears and pelt them with mud balls when the 
bell blings and in waltzes Jim Magruder 
and the thin Lizzie he is willing to admit 
is his w'fe. My ideas is that the city owes 

5 


Low Bridge 


him a refund for the dollar and a half they 
hooked him for the license tag, but at that 
she didn’t snatch nothing worth writing 
home about, except maybe on paper with 
black edges. 

I got about as much use for Magruder 
as a skinned eel has for a haircut and a 
shoeshine. They ain’t hardly nothing this 
baby don’t know at the leastest a hundred 
per cent’s, worth, and he don’t figure no¬ 
body in his classes as a snappy cracker ex¬ 
cepting his wife’s husband and his old man’s 
son, Jim. “I tells him where to head in” 
is his pet line, which gives you a full- 
length picture of this bozo without me 
going in for no more details. 

Liz is the trained seal, pa excellency. 
Nearly everything she squeaks begins “Jim 
says.” If she and him was to walk into the 
house ringing wet and with a umbrella in 
each hand, the chances is she would start of! 
the evening’s entertainments with the wal¬ 
loping news that “Jim says it’s raining 
something awful.” The only reason us and 
the Magruders is on socialist terms is be¬ 
cause Kate and Lizzie was side kicks in the 
6 


Low Bridge 

days when they was both man-trapping 
among the illegible lads. 

I’m kinda glad to see ’em on account of 
their busting in just in time to save my 
family from being sent back to the work- 
house and the nut factory, so I greets the 
set of flat tires jovial. 

“Cold out?” asks the wife. 

Lizzie throws a natural. “Jim says he 
thinks it’s gonna snow before morning.” 

“The weather man don’t guess so,” I cuts 
in. “He’s playing Fair and Warmer right 
on the nose.” 

“You don’t mean to say,” sneers Ma- 
gruder, “that you is still falling for that 
bull? I’ll bet you that-” 

“Don’t you do it,” giggles Lizzie. “Jim 
is wonderful when it comes to figuring the 
weather. You remember what a swell day 
Monday was? Well, I was going down¬ 
town and Jim says to me to take a um¬ 
brella. It seemed kinda silly, but sure 
enough I wasn’t back home more ’an a hour 
when it began coming down, cats and dogs, 
as Jim calls a heavy rain.” 

I starts to say something, but Katie flashes 

7 



Low Bridge 


me the shut-up, and I switches what I has 
on my mind to something that turns out to 
be worser. 

“How’s tricks?” I asks Magruder, and 
the evening is spoiled. 

“That reminds me,” says Katie. “Me 
and Tillie Olson had a argument about a 
hand this afternoon. You see, I had five 
hearts to the ace and bid - ” 

“I think you was right,” says Liz, at the 
end of the crime wave. 

“No,” opines Jim. “You shoulda let 
Tillie play the hand with four diamonds. 
How much was you set?” 

“I wasn’t,” says the wife. “I made a 
grand slam.” 

Even then 1 knows enough about bridge 
to be wise to the fact that a grand slam is 
the snake’s shins, but the wife’s come-back 
don’t jar Magruder none. 

“Just the same, you was wrong,” he pulls. 
“If you’d ’a’ played the hand proper you’d 
’a’ been set one trick.” And Lizzie nods 
yes. 

“What woulda happened,” I asks, “if the 
four diamonds had been played?” 

8 



Low Bridge 


“Tillie woulda made ’em,” he answers. 

“A grand slam?” I wants to know. 

“No,” he says. “Just four.” 

“Well,” says I, “either you’re cuckoo or 
the game is.” 

“You wouldn’t understand,” comes back 
Jim, slipping me a charity look. “They is 
certain forms and conventions that-” 

“I gets you,” I interrupts. “It would be 
like a runner, holding his hands over his 
head, making the hundred in nine flat, while 
another baby, keeping his arms by his side, 
like it says in the book, doing it in eleven. 
You’d slip the tin medal to the bozo with 
the form that went to them conventions. 
What the hell difference does it make 
how you play ’em if you cop the white 
meat?” 

“Please cut out them gutter gags,” 
snaps the wife, “and please don’t com¬ 
pare them barroom athaletics with a 
gentile and dignified game like bridge. 
They is lotta difference between people that 
don’t use nothing excepting their arms and 
legs and them that depends on their brains 
for pleasures and profits.” 


9 



Low Bridge 


“Jim says,” horns in Lizzie, “that it takes 
a wonderful mind to play proper.” 

“That let’s me and Katie out then,” says 
I. “She ain’t got enough sense to keep 
outta the way of making a grand slam, and 
I ain’t got enough to know why she should.” 

“Don’t call me she,” comes back the wife. 
“Maybe I was wrong about them hearts. 
I wish you wouldn’t be so stubborn, and try 
to learn how to play. Then we four could 
get together more.” 

“I don’t think he’s cut out for a bridge 
player,” says Magruder. 

“You don’t, eh?” I shoots back. “How 
long did it take you to learn the game 
good?” 

“About a year,” he answers. 

“That means,” say I, “it will take me 
about four days at the mostest.” 

“Want me to teach you?” grins Ma¬ 
gruder. 

“What with?” I asks. “You don’t mean 
to tell me you got brains enough to play 
bridge and besides enough left over to waste 
on me?” 

About that time the wife cuts in and 
io 


Low Bridge 


throws the switch on this line of conversa¬ 
tion. In a few minutes the Magruders 
give themselves the night air, leaving me 
and my family at the mercies of the wife. 

After we kisses good night, though, 
Katie says to me, “Is you really gonna learn 
to play bridge like you told Jim?” 

“You bet I am!” I comes back. “I’ll 
show that cuckoo where he heads in.” 


II 

The next day I hunts up High Spade 
Kennedy, a bozo that is a champ at every 
kinda card game from old maid to that 
French game that sounds something like 
shimmy the fare. Him and me is good 
pals, me having staked him lotta times 
when he gets trimmed by sitting in sessions 
with decks that is perfect strangers to him. 

“What do you know about bridge?” I 
asks him. 

“What is they to know that I don’t?” he 
comes back. 

“Is it easy to get hep *o?” I continues. 


n 


Low Bridge 


“Yeh,” says he, “even for you. Know 
the old whist game, don’t you?” 

I tells him I remember something about 
it and that I has watched maybe a half a 
dozen games of bridge. 

“The big stuff is the bidding,” explains 
High Spade. “Any flathead can play ’em 
after they’re down.” 

“How long,” I asks, “at the rate of two 
hours per day, will it take you to teach this 
flathead to play the game good?” 

“You oughtta be pretty fair in a week,” 
says Kennedy; “but why the rush to the 
auction block?” 

I tells him how Magruder’s got my gan¬ 
der up with all his bull about the kinda 
high-spiced brains it takes to collect a lotta 
points for a flock of honors you ain’t even 
had to reach for, and the grand educa¬ 
tion you got to have to make a ace of 
trumps stand up for a trick, and right away 
High Spade agrees to sit in. He knows 
Jim. 

“I’d swim the river,” says he, “to help 
you pry that leather-vest edition of Tight¬ 
wads I Has Met loose from a few smackers. 
12 


Low Bridge 

That cuckoo thinks more of a dime than he 
does of his wife.” 

“In them respects,” I comes back, “he 
ain’t got nothing on me except maybe nine 
cents. One of the reasons why I wants to 
learn how to throw a mean card in this here 
auction is so I can show that Lizzie of his 
that even the automat she married muffs 
’em oncet in a while.” 

“All right,” says Kennedy; “but don’t get 
no ideas in your head that you don’t have 
to use your dome none in this game. Of 
course, getting the papers dealt to you is 
the big thing, and the guy that thought up 
bridge could lose even his schoolgirl com¬ 
plexion to the worst ham in the world if he 
don’t get no pretty pictures to look at, but 
what you does with the cards when you gets 
’em is got some bearings on whether you 
cashes or carries. You gotta understand, 
too, that this ain’t no lone-hand proposition, 
neither. Can your wife play good?” 

“I don’t know,” I answers truthful, “but 
from hints that she drops around the house 
careless like she could spot James Q. 
Whist all the aces and kings in the deck and 

13 


Low Bridge 


knock him for a row of grand slams. She’s 
been keeping company with the game about 
a year three or four times a week, and if 
she ain’t friendly with it now, it ain’t be¬ 
cause he ain’t a sweet kid and sociable and 
not what you would call snobbish-” 

“Can the comedy,” says High Spade. 
“You’ll work yourself up into a crying spell 
pretty soon over the way you been neglect¬ 
ing that ball and chain of yours. I don’t 
care nothing about her disposition or her 
looks. Can she play bridge? Answer me 
those.” 

“I guess she’s as good as the poultry she 
battles with,” I replies, “and, anyway, that 
Magruder hen ain’t got nothing on her. 
That don’t leave you nothing to do but to 
shape me up to take a fall outta that goof of 
a husband of hers.” 

“That oughtn’t to be so hard,” says Ken¬ 
nedy. “From what I’ve seen of that baby’s 
play he ain’t so much of a much, and you 
got pretty good card sense, if any. The 
cards, maybe, will run wrong for you, but I 
can fix it so you’ll win every fourth hand at 
the leastest.” 

H 



Low Bridge 


“How?” I asks. 

“You deal every fourth hand, don’t you?” 
comes back High Spade. 

“Outta my life!” says I. “Nix on the 
iced deck! If I can’t beat Magruder on 
the up and up and by the powers of my 
brain, I ain’t gonna try. Taking dough 
from him don’t interest me none. I just 
want to show that baby what a cinch a 
childish game like bridge is to a mastiff 
mentalities like I got-” 

“To get,” cuts in Kennedy. “All right, 
bo, drop over this afternoon. I’ll round up 
a couple of the boys and—don’t forget to 
bring along some decks of cards.” 

“Don’t I always when I play with you?” 
I comes back. 

That bob-tailed compliment don’t annoy 
him none, and before he beats it he tips me 
off on a book that I should get about bridge 
which he says won’t help me none at play¬ 
ing the game, but which maybe would keep 
me from acting like I is cheating, bridge 
being one of them sports where you can be 
disgraced for life if you is caught doing 
some innocent thing like talking about 

IS 


Low Bridge 


shovels when you would like to see a spade 
led to you. 

I buys the book and for the next hour or 
so I plugs through the rules in back of it. 
I finds that they is more different ways of 
pulling bulls in the game than they is of a 
second-hand lizzie of getting outta order. 
From what I can see in a quick look a 
cuckoo could sit in the pastimes all night, 
and without holding no card bigger ’an a 
six spot grab off all the dough just by watch¬ 
ing close and collecting on foul tips and in¬ 
field errors. 

In the afternoon I drifts over to Ken¬ 
nedy’s joint and rides the goat. Me know¬ 
ing something about whist and having 
picked up a little of this and them about 
bridge by watching the wife perform, I 
don’t have much troubles getting wise, and 
by the time the session’s run a coupla hours 
I’m good enough to get into a argument 
with my partner about a rotten lead he 
makes and almost win it. 

“This is a soft spot,” says I to Kennedy 
when we quits. 

“Any game is, the first time you try it,” 
16 


Low Bridge 


comes back High Spade. ‘‘It’ll take you 
six months anyways to find out how much 
you don’t know about it.” 

Every afternoon for a week I take on 
Kennedy and his gang, and even he admits 
they is worse players than me, which is 
that bozo’s limit in compliments. I don’t 
tell Katie nothing about what I’m doing, 
and when she asks me when I’m going to 
take some bridge lessons I stalls her off with 
tired looks and yarns about how busy I is. 

About ten days after I starts learning the 
game and when I’m so good that I 
ain’t afraid to hook up with nobody, I 
brings home the bridge book I been reading. 

“I got a coupla minutes to myself to¬ 
day,” I tells the wife, “and I scummed 
through some of this hop. What is they 
about this game that is supposed to make 
your brains turn handsprings? It looks 
like the mush to me.” 

“Maybe yes,” comes back Katie, “but you 
is so smart I guess you could read a time¬ 
tables in the morning and build a locomo¬ 
tive all by yourself in the afternoon.” 

It ain’t in my schemes to get into a row 

17 


Low Bridge 


with the wife, so I laughs merrily and 
changes the subject to one of the mere hand¬ 
fuls outta which even Katie can’t get no 
disagreements with me. After supper I 
gets back to bridge and tells the wife what 
I been reading in the book, not really, but 
what I wants her to think is my styles of 
play when I does play. 

She starts telling me how she does it, and 
in about an hour I’m hep to what to expect 
from her. 

“How about asking the Nelsons to come 
in and play a little while to-night?” I 
asks. 

The Nelsons lives across the hall from us 
and ain’t such a bad pair of deuce spots. 
The wife is tickled, and in a coupla minutes 
she comes back with ’em. 

“You will have to have lots of patience 
with him,” says the frau, meaning me, “be¬ 
cause he don’t know nothing about the 
game excepting what he read in a book 
to-day.” 

“I ain’t no roaring hell-cat at it myself,” 
comes back Nelson. “What’ll we play 
for?” 

18 


Low Bridge 

“Make it easy,” says I. “Ten cents a 
point is enough for me.” 

“How much?” gasps Mrs. Nelson. 

I gets her the wrong way on purpose, and 
looks embarrassed by my cheapness. 

“Well,” says I, “make it twenty cents or 
thirty or whatever you is used to playing 
for. I’m willing to pay for my lessons.” 

“Don’t mind him,” cuts in the wife. 
“He’s got rubbles in his mind. We’ll play 
for a twentieth a couple. You got any 
ideas,” she asks me, “how much you could 
lose at a cent a point, even?” 

“Three or four dollars?” I guesses. 

“A minute,” she comes back. “If you 
was to play for that much and lose two or 
three rubbers you wouldn’t be able to pay 
no rent until 1956, and I wouldn’t never 
have no chances of getting that machine you 
is talking about, even if I got any now.” 

After which we gets busy and while I 
plays pretty fair I takes care to make 
enough boob bids to slip the lull to any 
suspicions the wife might have. The Nel¬ 
sons ain’t much and I coulda butchered 
them and copped enough outta penalties 

19 


Low Bridge 


alone to get a vermin-lined overcoat, but 
I holds my brains down. A coupla times 
I forgets myself and puts over some real 
slick acts, but when Katie looks kinda sur¬ 
prised and pats me on the back I quick turn 
around and slaps the last trump in the game 
on her ace of clubs, and a sure rubber goes 
down on the books for a set of two hundred. 
I ain’t ready yet for her to know how good 
I is at the game, she and that Magruder 
frail being too thick for my purposes. 

“For a beginner,” says Mrs. Nelson, 
when we quits about even, “you play very 
good.” 

“Well,” I comes back, “they is two chap¬ 
ters in the book that I ain’t had no chances 
to read yet. When I get them done, they 
won’t be nothing left for me to learn. I 
kinda like the game because it don’t take no 
more than a hour to get to the head of the 
class in it, providing you has even as many 
brains as a humming bird with paresis.” 

When the Nelsons beat it back to their 
dump the missis turns the hot steam on me. 

“That was a sweet crack you made,” 
says she, “about you learning bridge so easy 
20 


Low Bridge 

and comparing the Nelsons to cuckoo hum¬ 
ming birds.” 

“Me,” I gasps, “compare-” 

“Yeh, you!” cuts in the wife. “Here 
these people has been trying for a year to 
learn how to play without even knowing yet 
whether a finesse is a kinda salad or a part 
of the game, and you breezes in and prac¬ 
tically tells ’em to their faces that they is 
total losses without no insurance. Where 
do you get the ideas that you is good, 
anyways?” 

“Ain’t I?” I asks. 

“I can’t even laugh,” says she. “If it 
wasn’t for the facts that the Nelsons is no 
good and you had me for a partner, you 
wouldn’t have won one hand, even if 
you didn’t have nothing but pianolas 
dealt to you. Wait till you try some 
of them fast brains of yours against the 
Magruders.” 

“Lead ’em to me,” I comes back. 

“They is coming over to-morrow night,” 
says the wife, “and please try to give a 
imitation of a gentleman. You can learn a 
lots by watching Jim.” 


21 



Low Bridge 


“About the game or being a gentleman?” 
I wants to know. 

“Both,” says she. 


Ill 

“Well,” says I to Katie the next evening, 
“I finished them other two chapters in the 
book to-day.” 

“Got your diploma with you?” she asks. 

“I figure on getting that to-night,” I an¬ 
swers, “providing you don’t gum the 
works.” 

“Me?” she inquires, and I explains. 

“When we was playing with the Nelsons 
you kinda got the idea every time I bid that 
I was kidding and it was up to you to take 
it away to save the family honors or some¬ 
thing. When I bid I means it. Besides, 
every time I was doubled you got into a 
panic and ran around like a chicken with 
its feet off. Don’t take me outta no dou¬ 
bles. Don’t try to get me outta no jams. 
You don’t in nothing else, so why do it in 
bridge?” 

The wife’s dragging up the heavy guns 


22 


Low Bridge 

for the come-back my stuff calls for when 
the Magruders arrive. Me and my family 
owes a lot to them folks. They always 
pops in at the cricketal minute, just in time 
to save our coats of arms from being ripped 
up the back and thrown over the fence to 
the dogs. 

“Halloo,” I greets Lizzie. “What’s 
new at the Rialto?” 

“Katie tells me you is learning to play 
bridge,” says this baby. 

“What do you mean, learning?” I comes 
back. “I knows all they is to know about 
it. I read the book through and I took a 
postal-graduate course with the Nelsons 
last night.” 

“Whose book was that?” asks Magruder. 

“McGullible on Auction,” I tells him. 

“McGullible,” sneers Jim. “Why, that 
bozo’s stuff was passy ten years before the 
game was invented. Why didn’t you ask 
me? I’d ’a’ tipped you off on a live one.” 

“Anyways,” cuts in Lizzie, “Jim says 
you can’t learn to play no bridge outta no 
books.” 

“Maybe he can’t,” I comes back, “but I 

23 


Low Bridge 


can read good and I don’t figure the hour 
I put in with McGullible was wasted. I 
wasn’t so bad last night, was I, Katie?” 

“They is a bare chancet,” says the frau, 
“that somebody could be worser; but, se¬ 
rious, though, he done pretty good consid¬ 
ering that he didn’t never play the game 
before.” 

“Against the Nelsons,” scoffs Magruder. 

“I’m ready for all comers,” I announces. 

“After reading a has-been book for a 
hour and playing one game?” asks Jim. 
“You’d have a swell chancet with a regular 
player. Do you know even the rules of the 
game?” 

“You bet I do,” I answers. “I suppose 
you folks don’t overlook none of them in 
your sessions?” 

“Jim says,” breaks in Lizzie, “that bridge 
ain’t bridge unless you live up to all them 
rules, the way they does in the New York 
Whist Club, which is like the Four Hun¬ 
dred when it comes to what is right in this 
picture.” 

“Let’s play a little while,” says Katie, 
“just to teach Mr. Gullible’s friend that a 

24 


Low Bridge 

book a day won’t keep the losings away. 
How about it, Jim?” 

“All right,” says he. “We’ll just fool 
around for nothing.” 

“Not with me, you won’t,” I replies. “I 
can play as good as you cuckoos right now, 
and I’m ready to put my jack on the wit¬ 
ness stand to prove it. Give that a sneer.” 

“Don’t be silly,” suggests Katie. 

“We’ll play for a cent a point or we don’t 
play,” I comes back. “I ain’t gonna waste 
a whole day learning bridge without no 
chance of cashing in. It’s a kid game, any¬ 
ways, and I got to be paid for putting my 
time to it.” 

“All right,” says Jim with a grin, but I 
sees him tip the wink to the wife, meaning 
that he’ll slip back to her all the dough he 
cops. 

This don’t worry me none, me not figur¬ 
ing on losing to that minus, even if I has 
to do something to the back of the deck. 
Besides, I don’t care nothing about the 
money, my whole ideas being to make the 
Magruders mark down their brains from 
one dollar to one mark after seeing what a 

25 


Low Bridge 


cinch the game is for a lad that’s got 
bottled-in-bond gray matter and not stuff 
that was bought from a bootlegger. 

So we all sits down and the riot opens up. 
1 catch the deal on a deuce spot, and if I’d 
spread ’em out face up I couldn’t ’a’ done 
better for myself. I ain’t got nothing 
worth talking about excepting three aces, 
four kings, a mess of typewriters and a 
jack here and there. 

“Four no trumps,” says I. 

“How many?” asks the wife. 

“Four, f-o-u-r,” I repeats. “Let’s keep 
out the grocery clerks.” 

“You understand,” cuts in Magruder, 
“that you got to make ten tricks to get away 
with that, don’t you?” 

“That’s what McGullible says,” I comes 
back. “You folks got anything to say or is 
you just talking?” 

Nobody peeps, and Lizzie flips out 
card. I grabs it off, and before me and 
dummy—which don’t describe my w. ^ 
a-tall—quits operating back and forth i 
ain’t done nobody no harm except to 
slap ’em in the face with a small slam. 
26 



t t 


Four no trumps,” says I. 

GROGERY CLERKS. 


y y 


“Let’s keep out the 
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Low Bridge 

Magruder cashes in with the ace I ain’t 
got. 

“That’s sixty below the line and eighty 
above,” says Lizzie. 

“And some,” I adds. “Turn over your 
cards, kid, and I’ll show you where you 
revoked back yonder.” 

“Me,” she yells. “I ain’t never revoked 
in my life.” 

“You mean,” says I, “you ain’t never 
played with anybody with brains enough to 
catch you at it. No wonder you folks win 
so often. Turn ’em over.” 

Which Magruder does, and sure enough 
Lizzie ain’t acted right with her clubs. 

“We won’t count it,” says the wife. “It 
wouldn’t have made no difference in the 
score, anyways.” 

“It’s all right with me to pass it up,” I 
comes in, sarcastic, “but Jim says that 
bridge ain’t bridge unless you live up to all 
them rules. Hey, Jim?” 

Magruder looks kinda funny, but mum¬ 
bles that I is right, so I takes what is com¬ 
ing to me. 

“How do you like my stuff?” I asks 

27 


Low Bridge 


Jim. “Not bad for a beginner, huh?” 

“Even you couldn’t ball the hand,” he 
shoots back. 

“Me and Mr. McGullible thanks you,” 
I grins. “Deal ’em out, Lizzie.” 

Which she done, but towards the end she 
flips an eight spot face up. 

“Deal ’em over,” says I. “Card ex¬ 
posed.” 

“Come on, play,” growls Magruder. “A 
eight ain’t no honor.” 

“What of it?” I wants to know. “I 
guess you ain’t read Section 27 A of the 
rule book lately.” 

“Don’t be so smart,” chimes in the wife. 
“You ain’t in no gambling house now. 
This is a friendly game and-” 

“Listen here,” I cuts in. “I ain’t so par¬ 
ticular, but I wouldn’t want Jim here to 
get in bad with the New York Whist Club 
by busting any of the rules.” 

This time I ain’t got such a wolf of a 
mitt, but I finally gets the play for three 
hearts doubled. 

“Try and make it,” says Magruder. 

“Cinch,” I comes back, giving the 
28 



Low Bridge 

dummy the O. O., “now that I know where 
the eight spot is.” 

I gets by with a coupla tricky finesses, 
works a stunt which High Spade told me 
about to make Lizzie discard what she 
oughtn’t of and cops with four odd. To 
capper the climax, Magruder pulls a boner 
that’s so crude that even Lizzie forgets 
whose wife she is and hands him the razz. 

“So this is the game it took you a year 
to learn which calls for such a wonderful 
mind,” I jeers. “What’s there to it?” 

“The evening’s young,” says Magruder, 
“and you ain’t gonna have all the luck. 
I’ll show you where to head in before the 
night’s out. You and McGullible!” 

In a other hour we is carrying about 
twenty-five hundred points and I ain’t play¬ 
ing the cards no more. Magruder’s so mad 
by this time he’s making bids that is cuckoo 
and he’s got his wife jumping sideways 
with the bawling-outs he hands her. I just 
play him like a fish and he falls for any 
kinda bait. 

Then the luck changes. I handles the 
cards all right, but when you ain’t got the 

29 


Low Bridge 


papers, everything you do looks blah; any¬ 
ways it does to Katie, and I comes in for 
my end of the razzing. I think the wife’s 
sore, anyways, at how good I been playing, 
me only having one lesson, so she thinks, 
and her and them side kicks having been 
messing around with auction for a year, 
anyways. 

When we is nearly even and Jim is feel¬ 
ing better, I says to him, “How’s my 
stuff?” 

“I got to admit you is there for a be¬ 
ginner,” he answers. “What’s the name of 
that book you been reading?” 

“McGullible,” I tells him. “But he was 
a has-been twenty years ago, I hear.” 

“I got the names mixed,” says he. “I 
remembers now, McGullible is the latest 
authorities. You sure you only played 
once before this?” 

“Ask the wife,” I comes back. 

For the next hour we sticks around even, 
but I put over some trick stuff, that makes 
Magruder and the janes look goggle-eyed. 
When we is playing the last rubber and we 
each is got a game, I get the kinda hand I 
30 


Low Bridge 


been hoping for all night so as to put over 
a snappy act that High Spade says is the 
best ever if you gets away with it. They is 
eight spades with the four top honors, a 
couple of side tricks and a blank in hearts. 
I’m the dealer. 

“Four hearts,” I says. 

I see the wife look funny, I figures be¬ 
cause I jumps in so high. Lizzie passes 
and I don’t feel so good, but Magruder 
grins and saves the day, for a minute, any¬ 
ways. 

“Double,” says he. “I might as well 
grab off a coupla hundred points before 
taking the rubber.” 

I looks at the cards a long time without 
saying nothing, scratching my head and 
going through all the motions of a guy 
that’s got one foot in a beaver trap and the 
other on a hole in the ice. 

“Four spades,” I finally says in a kinda 
weak voice. 

“Double,” jumps in Lizzie quick, with¬ 
out doing no more thinking than is usual 
with that frail. 

The wife looks kinda dopey and is giving 

3i 


Low Bridge 


me the open mouth. She acts like she’s 
gonna say something but don’t. 

“Pass,” says Magruder, and I’m sitting 
on top of the world. 

“Redouble,” I yelps, and starts figuring 
up the score and the laughs I’ll hand Jim 
and his hen. 

Lizzie passes, and then blam, down I 
slide on my neck. 

“Five hearts,” says the wife, defiant like. 

I loses all commands to myself and flops 
the cards face up on the table. 

“Of all the total losses in the world!” I 
yelps. “Ain’t I told you a million times not 
to take me outta no doubles? I’m through! 
This ain’t no game for a guy with brains if 
his wife ain’t got none.” 

“Who ain’t got none?” snaps Katie. 
“Don’t you talk to me like that! What do 
you want me to do with this hand?” And 
she lays down a mitt with all the hearts in 
the world. She’s just as strong in them as 
I was in spades. 

“What do I care what you got?” I howls. 
“Why the hell didn’t you let me alone? I’d 
’a’ sure taken these babies to the cleaners,” 
32 




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[ LOSES ALL COMMANDS TO MYSELF AND FLOPS THE CARDS FACE UP 

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Low Bridge 


“Don’t you hell me!” shouts the wife. 
“How do I know anything about them bar¬ 
room tricks you got from that McGullible 
book? Don’t you open your mouth or I’ll 
throw the cards in your face.” 

“We’re all about even, anyways,” says 
Magruder. “Let’s go, Lizzie.” 

Me and the wife don’t say a word while 
we is cleaning up the room, but we could 
easily get a divorce apiece for what we is 
thinking. 

After we is done, I asks, “Ain’t you gonna 
kiss me good night?” 

“You should live so long,” she comes 
back. 

“Busting the agreement, huh?” I sneers. 
“Gone to bed without kissing me.” 

“I ain’t busting no agreement,” says 
Katie. “I ain’t gone to bed. I’m gonna sit 
up all night, you cheap gambler! You and 
your whole rotten family-” 

So this is bridge! 


33 





















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I 




























HIGH BRIDGE 


I 

T HIS here game of bridge is, you 
might say, the greatest of American 
indoor spats. They is lots of rows 
us married lads can work up over such do¬ 
mestical matters as slapping a monicker on 
the bambino or where-was-you-last-night- 
huh and the such, but them kinda lukeworn 
skirmishes ain’t to be compared to the hell 
and hot water you can get into with the 
frau just by forgetting that the six of clubs 
ain’t been played yet. 

Before I was talked into falling for this 
auction stuff, home life maybe wasn’t just 
one swift song; but anyways, me and the 
misses could easy be mistaken for a coupla 
friends. Things ain’t no more now like 
they used to was. A cuckoo dropping into 
our hut around breakfast time any morning 

35 


High Bridge 


after a session with the pestboards would 
get the idea that we was a pair of deaf and 
dummies marooned on a iceberg and not 
able to say nothing on the account of our 
fingers being frostbitten. 

IVe told you fellers before how I learned 
to play bridge from a gambolier named 
High Spade Kennedy, and also from outta 
the book by McGullible, just to show up 4 
some friends of the frau, who was always 
bragging how much brains it took to get 
jerry to the game. After proving to them, 
by a trip to the cleaners, that such was not 
the case, I figured on retiring on my low 
rails; me, up to that time, not having no 
high opinions of any kinda pastime that 
the frills could get by with, without inter¬ 
fering with the piece-work they was doing 
in the scandal shop. But this darn game is 
like whiskers. It just grows on you nilly- 
billy, and before I knows it, IVe given stud 
and pinochle the grand razzazz and taken 
my chips to the auction house. 

We plays two or three times a week, 
mostly with the Magruders, them perfect 
busts that started me off on the sport of 
36 


High Bridge 


kings and aces, and in a coupla months I 
could be third-degreed into admitting that 
they wasn’t hardly nobody that I couldn’t 
spot about two legs per rubber and knock 
for a trip to the check book. The wife, 
however, is got different ideas, which is, of 
course. 

“How do you like my stuff?” I asks her 
* one night, when we is still talking at the end 
of the game. 

“Well,” says she, “considering that you 
had all the cards and me for a partner, and 
the folks we was playing with don’t know 
nothing about bridge, you could maybe 
have done worser. You only trumped 
your own tricks about eight times and 
blocked yourself twice and finessed against 
me every ten minutes or so; but outside of 
that, I can’t think of no more than a dozen 
things that you done wrong.” 

“From them praises you is singing to 
me,” I remarks, “you must want some¬ 
thing.” 

“I does,” comes back Kate. 

“Give it a name,” I tells her. 

“I want,” says the misses, “that you 

37 


High Bridge 

should give a imitation of a gentleman of 
refineries and tastes when we goes up to 
the Sintons’ next week.” 

“What for?” I desires to know. “Pete 
Sinton and me used to eat pie with the 
same knife, and even if he is got enough 
jack now to slip a ten-case note to every 
brunette in Africa, that boy ain’t the kind 
to put on no dogs with.” 

“Maybe not,” admits the misses, “but see¬ 
ing that he ain’t been around near you for 
a long time, they is a barely chance that his 
manners is got better than when he was bar¬ 
rooming with you. I hears that they has a 
wonderful place out in the country, with 
butlers scattered all over the house, and 
that they is a lotta swells coming to this 
party.” 

“How,” I asks, “do we happen to bust in 
with the nifties?” 

“That’s easy,” answers Kate. “Belle 
Sinton knows me and don’t know you. 
You horns in by the mere accidents of mar¬ 
riage.” 

“I does, eh?” I yelps. “Suppose I ups 
and refuses to go.” 

38 


High Bridge 


“I ain’t got no time to waste on no joke 
supposes like that,” comes back the wife. 
“What I wants to say is this: If you don’t 
act at the Sintons’ like a gentleman should, 
you will maybe find out some more about 
them accidents of marriage I was telling 
you about. They is sure to be some bridge 
playing there, and I don’t wish that you 
should let the idea get around that the sus¬ 
picion you got of the game was learned 
from a couple of yeggmen in the back room 
of a boiler factory.” 

“What,” I inquires, “is wrong with the 
way I play?” 

“It would take me, at the leastest, a week 
to even scratch the service,” answers the 
frau; “but they is a few things I could men¬ 
tion right quick.” 

“Them being?” I asks. 

“One of ’em being,” says she, “the barrel- 
house habit you has of slamming the cards 
down on the table like you was mad at ’em 
for having bit you. Another is the mean 
way you got of looking at me when I don’t 
happen to lead the suit you thinks you wants 
but probably don’t.” 


39 


High Bridge 

“Well,” I remarks, “even a king may look 
at a cat.” 

“Yeh,” returns the misses; “but not no 
deuce spot.” 

“What else is they,” I asks, “that I 
does-” 

“It ain’t so much what you does in a 
bridge game,” cuts in the squaw, “as what 
you does to it. Auction, you may have 
heard by accident some place, is supposed 
to be a nice, quiet pastimes for people with 
cultures; but the way you plays it could 
easy be mistaken for a cross between a 
dog fight and a raid on a gambling den. 
You don’t play auction; you broadcasts 
it.” 

“Got any more trumps?” I asks, sarcastic. 

“You is a gloating winner and a rotten 
loser,” goes on Kate. “When you is ahead 
you is as full of conversation as a barker 
at a ballyhoo; when you is behind you ain’t 
got no more to say than a deaf mutt; and, 
besides, you looks about as happy as a kid 
that’s just been washed behind the ears, 
spanked and put to bed without nothing to 
eat except a dose of castor oil.” 

40 



High Bridge 

“What is you out for?” I asks. “The 
nonstop razz record?” 

“I’ll be making a record,” says the wife, 
“if I can get you to act at the Sintons’ like 
you was used to playing bridge as if it was 
a decent parlor game instead of a excuse 
for dragging out samples of your temper 
line.” 

“I’ll show you some right now,” I yelps, 
real riled by the grand slams the frau’s been 
scoring offa me with five honors in one 
hand. “If you was to know ten times as 
much as you knows about bridge now, if 
any, you wouldn’t hardly know nothing. 
You-” 

“Maybe not,” interrupted Kate, “but I 
could teach you that much, anyways.” 

“No, you couldn’t,” I shouts back, not 
noticing until too late that I has left the 
switch wide open and backed my train of 
thoughts into a blind alley. “You couldn’t 
learn me nothing.” 

“You’re right,” says the millstone; “and 
now that you is holding both ends of the 
argument, they ain’t nothing for me to do 
and I’m on my way to bed.” 


4 1 


High Bridge 

“You can call off that party date,” I 
yells. “I ain’t going.” 

“Write down any other jokes you knows,” 
comes back the misses, “and we’ll have ’em 
for breakfast.” 


II 

I has my way as per usual, and Friday 
afternoon we leaves for the Sintons’, our in¬ 
vite calling for us to stick around till Mon¬ 
day morning. 

Pete’s place out in the country is the real 
spiff in Class A shanties and could easy be 
palmed off by a good pest agent as the home 
of one of them infant prodigals out in 
Hollywood; besides the which, the grounds 
around the shack is big enough to hold the 
kinda crowds that turns out for them Eng¬ 
lish sucker football games. Every tree and 
bush and blade of grass on the lot looks like 
it was planted personal with a ruler instead 
of a shovel. 

I has to grin inwards at the idea of Baldy 
Pete Sinton, who used to think that a two- 
bit flop in a bed-house and a flock of hog 

42 


High Bridge 

and hen fruit was the least words in luxu¬ 
ries, living like a Roman umpire in a Span¬ 
ish air castle, all littered up with butlers 
and scullery maidens and stable bride¬ 
grooms. Ten years before, me and him 
was panhandling around in the Oklahoma 
oil fields, and they wasn’t enough real 
jack between us any time to buy a swim¬ 
ming suit for a tadpole; but he stuck longer 
’an me and pretty soon a gusher up and 
hit him in the face. The rest is in the 
histories. 

I ain’t seen Pete since it begun raining 
barrels on him; but something tells me that 
all the flash and fussy feathers I pipes be¬ 
fore me ain’t his doings, but musta been 
brung on by the wife. I just can’t imagine 
that lad using more’n one fork, if any, at 
a meal and the old imagine ain’t so far 
wrong at that. 

Pete’s at the door when we breezes up, 
the same old Baldy, a little fatter than he 
used to was, and looking about as comfort¬ 
able in his joy rags as a guy in a parade 
that’s bust his last suspender button and 
got a garter dragging. 


43 


High Bridge 


“Hello,” he says, jovial. “How’s the old 
low-down buzzard bird?” 

“Do you mean it?” I asks. 

“Sure, I does, you thieving scoundrel,” 
he comes back. 

“Good boy!” I answers, grabbing his 
mitts. “I thought maybe you was trying 
to be polite and make me feel at home, you 
lying horse robber.” 

“Gosh,” says Pete, “it sounds great to be 
called that! How much dryer is you than 
usual?” 

“Just as,” I answers. 

The wife in the meantime has been towed 
off by the misses of the roost and Sinton 
gives me the shoulder to follow him. We 
drifts upstairs and finally lands in a room 
at the back of the shack that looks like it 
got into the place by mistake. They ain’t 
hardly nothing there excepting a coupla 
run-down chairs, a worn-out rug, smeared 
up with cigar ashes, and a rickety cabinet. 

“My study,” grins Sinton. 

“What do you study here?” I asks. 
“Labels?” 

“Yeh,” comes back Pete, “and I is also 


44 



“Hello,” he says, jovial. “How's the old low-down 
buzzard bird ? ” Page 44. 







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High Bridge 

taking lessons in Scotch,” with the which 
he drags out a bottle and pours a set of 
stiff hookers. 

“Over the river,” says he. 

“And through the woods,” I replies. 
“Like old times, ain’t it?” 

“This room you is in,” answers he, kinda 
mournful, “is all that is left of them. It’s 
the only thing in the whole joint that be¬ 
longs to me exclusive, and I had a grand 
battle with the burden to save that. The 
rest of this pile of stuck-up stucco is the 
wife’s idea of what she calls a quiet nook 
out in the country.” 

“Well,” says I, “that’s what you draws 
for getting in the way of that damn gusher. 
If you’d ’a’ done like me and beaten it 
outta Oklahoma in time, you could yet be 
enjoying the pleasures of poverties.” 

“Maybe you think they ain’t got none,” 
returns Baldy. “Wait till you see the 
bunch of dry holes that is up here for the 
week-end. They don’t none of them know 
nothing excepting cards. I was gonna 
have you out with some regular folks, but 
the misses was keen on bringing your frau 

45 


High Bridge 


here this time on the accounts of hearing 
that she was good at this bridge hop. Is 
she?” 

“You want my opinion,” I asks, “or 
hern?” 

“How long you been hitched?” comes 
back Pete. 

“Fifteen years,” I answers. “Why?” 

“Then you ain’t got no opinions,” says 
he. “What does she think about her 
game?” 

“Well,” I tells him, “Kate’s got the idea 
that if she was to hook up with the guy that 
wrote the book-” 

“She’s gonna have that chance right 
here.” 

“What do you mean?” I inquires. 

“Ever hear of a lad named Angus Mc- 
Gullible?” asks Baldy, right back. 

“Sure!” I replies. “That’s the bobo that 
learned me the game with his book—him 
and High Spade Kennedy.” 

“Oh,” says Pete, “then you plays too?” 

“In our set,” I yawns, “one must. Is 
Angus one of your week-enders?” 

“He’ll be here to-morrow,” answers 

46 



High Bridge 


Baldy. “That bimbo comes every Satur¬ 
day and Sunday regular for his wages. If 
I should shut down this dump, that baby’d 
have to go to work. He lives a coupla 
miles or so down the road, and Belle uses 
him as a kinda side show to pull the come- 
ons in to her blow-outs. They ain’t hardly 
a session of bridge outta the which that boy 
don’t tote away at the leastest a hundred 
fish. He’s been coming here, on and off, 
for six months now, and I ain’t seen him 
dig yet.” 

“From the way you talks,” I remarks, 
“I gathers Angus ain’t your favorite 
color.” 

“If he was choking on a bone,” says Pete, 
“I wouldn’t even pat him on the back. I 
almost quit drinking Scotch because Mc- 
Gullible is. You being here, though, gives 
me an idea. Will you do me a favor?” 

“I didn’t bring my gat,” I answers quick, 
“and I ain’t so good at strangling like I 
used to was. Besides-” 

“But you is still on friendly terms with 
a deck of cards, ain’t you?” cuts in Baldy. 
“Seems to me like you was able in the old 

47 


High Bridge 

days to make the papers jump through 
hoops and say papa. Now-” 

“Nothing doing,” I interrupts, short. “I 
don’t pull them things no more. The only 
aces that I plays with nowadays is them 
which is dealt to me honest.” 

“I know,” says Sinton; “but in a pinch 
you could talk pretty to the pictures, 
couldn’t you?” 

“I suppose,” I admits, modest; “but 
wouldn’t you and me get in sweet if I was 
caught icing a deck? Lead me to this boy 
McGullible on the up and up, if all you 
want is to slip him a trimming. I ain’t so 
worse at the game; and, besides, they is 
some snappy tricks I learned from High 
Spade Kennedy that maybe Angus don’t 
know nothing about.” 

Pete shakes his head, dubious. 

“Playing on the square,” says he, “you 
wouldn’t have no more chances of beating 
him than a jack rabbit, and I’d give my 
right arm to see that cuckoo knocked off 
the Christmas tree. One good walloping 
and maybe Belle and the other hens that 
lay around this place wouldn’t think Angus 
48 


High Bridge 


was the curly bearcat like they does now. 
They ain’t no question but that the boy’s 
good. I’ve played around with the game 
enough to know that.” 

“Well,” I remarks, “he’s gotta to have 
the prominent cards like any one else to 
win.” 

“Not this bozo,” comes back Baldy. “He 
don’t have to have nothing. All you got to 
do is bid once or sneeze or something like 
that, and this baby knows what you got in 
your hand, and if it’s anything good he’ll 
make you discard it before you knows what 
all the shooting’s for.” 

“Leave him to me,” says I, “and I’ll make 
you a present of his hide without working 
no skin game, neither.” 

“I got a case of Scotch,” announces Pete, 
“that goes to the guy that can slap the red 
ink on Angus.” 

“Ship it now,” I comes back, “so it’ll be 
home when I get there.” 

Ill 

After I takes a pipe at the bunch of fluffs 
that Pete’s wife has brung for the party, 

49 


High Bridge 

I’m kinda glad that the gusher hit him in¬ 
stead of me. They is six couples outside of 
us, and they ain’t one of ’em that’s worth 
one hurrah in Hades. I gets it from Baldy 
that they is all in the first hundred of the 
four, and they ain’t none of the she-men in 
the layout that’s done any work in three or 
four generations. It just gets me mean to 
be near ’em, and it takes hardly no times 
at all for me to get into their black looks. 

Right after dinner that night one of the 
starched frails whose name is De Smythe, 
the original copy of which come over to 
this country with a Mayflower in one hand 
and a bottle of liquor in the other for the 
Indian real-estate business, throws a rope 
of pearls at the swine. 

“You in trade?” she asks me. 

“Sure,” I comes back. “What you got— 
a second-hand washing machine or a baby 
buggy or something to swap?” 

She cuts in with “Sir!” on ice. 

“Oh,” I goes on, “I didn’t make you at 
first. You mean if I is in business. I’ll 
tell the cock-eyed world I is.” 

“Oil?” she asks. 


50 


High Bridge 


“Better’n that,” I tells her. “I got the 
garbage-collection contract in the city; and 
believe me, it’s some fat graft! We takes 
the stuff and-” 

“How ghastly!” she gasps, and beats it. 

A few minutes later Pete grabs me and 
pulls me off in a corner. He looks scared. 

“What you been telling that De Smythe 
woman?” Baldy wants to know. 

“Why?” I comes back. 

“I musta give you too many shots in the 
arm before dinner,” says Pete. “Whatever 
you pulled, she was about ready to leave 
the joint flat and I had one swell time 
squaring you.” 

“How’d you do it?” I inquires. 

“I told her,” says Sinton, “that you was 
worth eight million dollars, and had a 
funny sense of humour, for which you was 
noted when you was in Harvard. I ex¬ 
plained your rough talk by saying you 
mixed a lot with your men in the gold 
mines.” 

“Gold mines!” I laughed. “She thinks 
Pm in the garbage-collection business.” 

“I fixed that too,” says Pete. “Garbage, 



High Bridge 

I tells her, is your contemptible way of talk¬ 
ing about money, on account of you having 
so much of it. Watch your step, bo. The 
wife’s nearly shot the roll and her nerves 
to get in with this gang of society saps.” 

“I see,” says I, kinda sorry that I had 
done any kidding. “I’ll keep my trap shut 
after this.” 

“When you has to,” comes back Baldy, 
“chew the rag with ’em about cards or 
money. I’ve let the ideas get around that 
you is cuckoo on bridge, and I even told 
’em a funny antidote about how you and 
Charlie Schwab oncet played for ten dol¬ 
lars a point against the Rockefeller boys at 
a benefit for the I. W. W.” 

“Ten dollars a point, huh!” I remarks. 
“What kinda money do you shoot for 
around here?” 

“Not no ten dollars,” grins Pete. “Five 
cents is our limit.” 

“It’d better be,” I comes back, “or that 
week-end of yourn ends right here with this 
Harvard boy.” 

Sinton musta spread the salve in pretty 
good shape, because when I gets to min- 
52 


High Bridge 


gling with the gang later on, they is all try¬ 
ing to talk to me at oncet. While I ain’t 
had much to do with the blue-buds, it don’t 
take me long to get the idea that this bunch 
ain’t the real cream at all, but a set of skim- 
milkers that is stalling around like they had 
a lotta jack, but on the low-down is glad of 
the opportunities to mooch off birds like 
the Sintons. Maybe they is all from swell 
families, but they don’t ring blue to me. 

This Mrs. De Smythe makes a real fuss 
over me, bragging about how much she 
likes big, ragged men that has knocked 
Nature down for the count and picked its 
pockets without letting success change them 
from being simple, she pulling all of this 
ba-blah right in front of her husband, a 
little, sawed-off, watery-eyed misfoot that 
don’t weigh no more than ninety-eight 
pounds, including the lip cheater and the 
manacle. Kate listens sorta blank to the 
rah-rah the jane is spilling; but before she 
has a chance of shooting a ball into the 
wrong pocket, the De Smythe wren drags 
me and the frau off to a bridge table. 

“I don’t suppose,” says she, “that they 

S3 


High Bridge 


is much interest for you in a five-cent game, 
but-” 

“That’s all right,” I cuts in, giving the 
wife the foot-office to look, listen and stop; 
“I just plays for the pleasures.” 

“I know you don’t care for no more 
garbage,” comes back Mrs. De Smythe. 
“That’s just a joke me and your husband 
is got,” she explains to Kate, who is giving 
us the pop eye. 

I rings a quick change in on the subject 
and then we gets to playing. From the 
luck we has, Pete, who is looking on mosta 
the time, musta thought that I was cold¬ 
decking the game right along. For a hour 
I don’t hold nothing that wouldn’t be worth 
at least a three bid in something from Old 
Leather Vest hisself; and the few times I 
ain’t got ’em, the wife’s there with the 
pace cards. Besides, I puts over deep-sea 
finesses, bluffs and tricky shifts that musta 
made Baldy think that I was, anyways, do¬ 
ing some finger-nail work on the back of 
the cards, even if the decks was honest. 

Nothing don’t come up in the talk to put 
me in bad with the yarn Sinton spilled 
54 



High Bridge 


about me, excepting once nearly when De 
Smythe asks me what my year was at 
Harvard. 

“Please don’t bring that up,” I answers, 
giving the misses the toe-tip. “I had a sad 
experience when me and Ted Roosevelt 
was rooming together and I hates-” 

He, being a polite bimbo, mumbles a ex¬ 
cuse for being alive, which he should, and 
switches the conversation to gold mines, 
which I don’t know nothing about and he 
don’t neither, making it easy for me to give 
him a lotta valuable info about the sub¬ 
jects. They ain’t nothing you can tell that 
cane-toter that ain’t a eight-column head 
in a extra. 

We plays along for maybe a other hour, 
and towards the end of the game most of 
the gang at the house is looking on, Pete 
having passed out the news, I guess, that 
some snappy bridge was being demon¬ 
strated at Table No. i. At the finish we is 
fifty-six smackers to the good and De 
Smythe shoves over his check. 

“Here,” says I, passing it and a wink to 
Baldy, “give this to the poor of the village.” 

55 


High Bridge 

While the rest of the bunch stands around 
downstairs getting free air and gas, me 
and Pete ducks up to his study to see if the 
Scotch needs any attention. It does. 

“How did my work hit you?” I asks 
Sinton. 

“Was all them aces dealt to you,” he 
comes back, “or did you help yourself?” 

“Wasn’t you watching?” I inquires. 

“Yeh,” he admits; “but if you is as good 
now as you was oncet, the eye ain’t got no 
more chance in a race with the hand than a 
crippled snail has with a scared rabbit.” 

“It was on the square,” I tells Baldy. 
“Gimme them kinda cards and the same 
breaks to-morrow and I’ll make McGul- 
lible look like his first lesson in bridge was 
next week. All-•” 

“You don’t know how strong that lad is,” 
cuts in Pete, “and you don’t know how wild 
I is to get Angus a good trimming in this 
house, or you wouldn’t insist so much on 
being honest. Be a good kid and forget 
them scribbles of yourn for a coupla days. 
I must have that baby’s goat and you gotta 
get it for me.” 

56 


High Bridge 


I tries to convince Baldy that I can beat 
McGullible on the square, me being all 
puffed up over my easy win over the De 
Smythes, and that he shouldn’t ask me to 
do no slicker stuff; but it ain’t no use. Sin- 
ton’s made up his mind that he’s gonna 
make Angus dig for oncet in his life and 
that I’m the bimbo to turn the trick. 
Finally I agrees, if the game is going agin 
me, to have a talk with the cards, which 
satisfies Pete. We discusses some details, 
and after another trip over the river and 
through the woods, I beats it to join the 
frau. She’s in our room. 

“Well,” says I, putting my watch on the 
table, “it’s a quarter to twelve. I’ll give 
you fifteen minutes to do your stuff. What 
foxy passes has I pulled so far?” 

“What right has I, a simple country 
girl,” comes back the frau with satires, “to 
criticize the manners of a Harvard grad¬ 
uate? If I should say anything, for ex¬ 
ample, about your rough fork work, or 
them expressions you used in the game, you 
might leave me and run away to your gold 
mines with that frumpy Mrs. De Smythe; 

57 


High Bridge 

and what would I do then, poor thing?” 

“That college-and-millionaire stuff,” I 
explains, “was just a joke of Pete’s to liven 
things up. But I has got a gold mine.” 

“Yeh?” inquires Kate. 

“Yeh,” I answers; “you. You got it over 
the rest of those cluckers like a big top over 
a side show.” 

I gets to sleep ten minutes to twelve. 

IV 

McGullible don’t show the next day until 
after dinner. I only has to take one look 
at him to get hep to why Pete would pass 
up everything to dance at his funeral. He’s 
one of them high-voiced lads, with a line 
of patter for the ladies that makes you think 
of men dressmakers that was once in the 
chorus. When Pete introduces me out on 
the porch, I feel like taking off my hat and 
kissing his hand. 

“Do you play bridge?” Angus asks me. 

“One or two times,” I tells him; “but I’m 
kinda sorry now that I learned it.” 

“How is that?” he wants to know. 

58 


High Bridge 


“Well,” says I, “when I first heard about 
the game I thought it was scientifical, like 
pitch or stud; but it ain’t nothing but show¬ 
down. If you gets the papers you cop; if 
you ain’t holding ’em you go way back and 
set down.” 

“You have a wrong idea,” comes back 
McGullible with a sweet smile. “You 
must read my book on bridge.” 

“Oh, you play, then?” I inquires, sur¬ 
prised. 

“You musta heard of McGullible on 
Auction,” cuts in Baldy. 

“Seems like I did,” says I; “but I sorta 
had a idea it was something about them 
hog-and-mule sales they has out in the 
sticks.” 

“What was the ideas of that line of hop?” 
asks Pete, when sweetie breezes away. 

“Little advertising, bo,” I tells him. 
“I’m gonna give that cream puff a grand 
trimming, and it’ll sting more if the wallop¬ 
ing comes from the kinda fathead he thinks 
I is. I tried the stunt oncet on a coupla the 
wife’s side-kickers and it went with a wow.” 

“Then you’ll play ball?” asks Sinton. 

59 


High Bridge 

“Anything you’d do to that cuckoo’d be 
honest,” I answers. “You act like I tells 
you. When me and Angus is playing and I 
gives you the tip-off, start something around 
the room like making a speech or yelling 
fire or busting a vase. My fingers maybe 
ain’t so good like they was and I may 
need more time for my stuff. Got that?” 

“I’d dynamite the house to hook that 
baby,” says Baldy. 

In about a hour the bridge playing be¬ 
gins. Some other folks has dropped in 
from the neighborhood and they is enough 
for four tables. Sinton, hisself, don’t sit in, 
him and the wife having put up a prize 
to be battled over, besides the regular 
stakes. 

“If you’re gonna get him,” whispers 
Pete to me, “you gotta do it to-night. He 
just told me he wouldn’t be here to-morrow, 
and you maybe will have to do some fancy 
stuff in the other games to get in at the 
finish with him.” 

This progressive proposition, which 
Baldy framed before he knew about Angus 
beating it Sunday, kinda throws the works 
60 


High Bridge 


out, they being a chance of my not getting 
to hook up with McGullible; but it’s got 
to be gone through with. 

On the first round I draws the De 
Smythe hen for a partner, which don’t 
worry me none, the frail being a pretty 
snappy trump slinger. Against us is the 
wife and a lad named Sullivan. We wins 
the heat without any troubles and moves 
on to scrap with the winners at the next 
table. 

They ain’t no use dragging out the pre¬ 
lims. Me and Mrs. De Smythe gets all the 
cards and spades in the deck and they ain’t 
nothing for me to do excepting play ’em as 
I get ’em. 

The last game works out like we has 
hoped, and we hooks up with Angus and a 
Mrs. Davey, being the only pairs that 
ain’t been knocked for a goal some place or 
the other in the march around the room. 
McGullible hands me one of them pretty 
smiles. 

“Would you care to make the stakes ten 
cents?” he asks. 

“Ten cents or ten dollars,” I comes back. 

6l 


High Bridge 


“I got a fifty-fifty chance in any kinda 
show-down.” 

I looks around for Pete and I sees him 
standing at the other end of the room; but 
he’s watching close and nods that he is 
ready to do his bit. My luck stays with 
me, and the first hand Angus deals me is 
the kind that plays itself. I grabs off four 
spades and four honors in one mitt and we 
is off to a grand start. 

The next leg goes to McGullible. The 
boy does know how to play ’em. He don’t 
get such a much to work with, but he can 
sure make sevens and eights act like kings 
and queens. His partner ain’t no slouch 
neither, and keeps right in step with him. 

It’s my deal next and I hesitates a little. 
The way the cards has been running, I 
figures I got a pretty good chance of grab¬ 
bing off the loot on the square; besides, I 
ain’t so sure I can monkey with the deck 
and get away with it. Pete, who’s been 
strolling back and forth between the table 
and the other side of the room, passes so 
he can catch my eye and he looks so darn 
begging that I gives him the high sign. 
62 


High Bridge 

Right away Baldy raises his hand and does 
his song and dance. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” says he, “while 
I think of it, I want to tell you about to¬ 
morrow-” 

I don’t listen to no more. The way Sin- 
ton’s standing, McGullible has to turn clean 
around to be polite, and the women folks 
also pays attention. Me, I got other work 
to do. 

“That’s all,” I hears Pete say, and it’s 
enough. I’m through. I passes over the 
deck to be cut, but making a cut a waste of 
time ain’t no trick a-tall. Then I deals. 

I ain’t picked out nothing for myself ex¬ 
cepting the ace, king, queen of hearts, the 
ace, king, queen of spades, the ace, king, 
queen, jack of clubs and, not to be too rough, 
only the king, jack and nine of diamonds. 
What the others is got I don’t know and 
don’t care a whole hell of a lot. 

“One no trump,” I announces. 

“Two diamonds,” comes along Angus. 

My partner ain’t got nothing to say and 
the Davey jane also pulls a clam. 

I glances around and sees the wife and 

63 



High Bridge 

Baldy in back of me. I grins and bids 
“Three no trumps” just to show that Scotch 
cuckoo what I thinks of his force-up stunt. 
Angus passes and I’m ready to start the 
massacre when the Davey hen comes 
through with “Four diamonds.” 

“Four no trumps,” I yelps. 

“Five diamonds,” says McGullible. 

I looks my mitt over again, and am just 
ready to go to five no trumps when I 
changes my mind. I figure I can set that 
baby about four hundred, which’ll win for 
us even if we lose the rubber game. 

“Double,” says I. 

“Redouble,” comes back Angus, right 
quick. 

“Try and make it!” I snaps. 

He tries and does, for a grand slam, 
doubled and redoubled. I loses all control 
of myselfs and heaves the cards across the 
room. 

“Damn such a game!” I howls. “I’m 
through with it for life,” and I beats it up 
to the room. The wife follows. 

“What happened?” she asks. “You had 
such a wonderful hand.” 

64 


High Bridge 


“It oughta been,” says I, grim. “I 
made it myself. Here’s how it happened, 
though.” 

I grabs a piece of paper and draws a 
picture of it for her: 


d- 

C—io, 9, 6, 5, 3,2 
S—8,7, 5,4, 3 
H—8,4 


D—A, Q, io, 7, 6 
C- 

s- 

H—J, io, 9, 7, 6, 5, 3, 2 


D-K,J,9 
C-A, K, Q,J 
S—A, K, Q 
H—A, K, Q 



“I don’t see yet,” remarks Kate, after 
looking it over, “how anybody could make 
a grand slam against all them aces and 
kings. I guess I wasn’t watching close.” 

“You wasn’t,” I comes back, “or you’da 
seen something that won’t happen again in 
a million years. That De Smythe baby 

65 







High Bridge 

starts off by leading a club, which Angus 
trumps. Then he shoves out a heart, which 
I slaps my queen on and which McGul- 
lible’s partner trumps. That frail leads a 
diamond and Angus takes my nine with a 
ten. It don’t make no difference what I 
play, with him sitting over me with ace, 
queen, ten. McGullible sends out a heart 
and my king is trumped on the other side. 
Then she comes along with another trump 
and my jack’s shot. Angus follows with a 
heart and Mrs. Davey uses her last trump 
to make a bum outta my ace of hearts. She 
leads back a spade, which McGullible 
grabs with a diamond. Then he leads the 
ace of trumps, snatching off my king, and 
his hearts are as good as wheat. Now do 
you see it?” 

“You musta done something wrong,” 
says Kate, shaking her head, “or it wouldn’t 
have happened.” 

“I did,” I admits, “but not in the play¬ 
ing. I stacked the deck for Angus.” 

Then the frau starts razzing me, but be¬ 
fore she gets very far they is a knock. It’s 
one of them dolled-up servants. 

66 


High Bridge 

“A book,” says he. “With the compli¬ 
ments of Mr. McGullible.” 

I takes a quick look. It’s him on auc¬ 
tion. 


67 


EIGHT CLUBS, 
DOUBLED 


T HEY ain’t no other indoor sport that 
runs the same kinda cuckoo course 
with the card come-ons that this 
here bridge does. 

Before you has ever sat in at a session 
of auction, you got nothing but snicks and 
sneers for the pastimes, classing it in the 
brain-fodder division with Dorcas Society 
lotto and Epworth League euchre. After 
you gets drug into a game by the ball and 
chain, you still treats it with contempt until 
the big night when you sneaks through a 
coupla wild-eyed finesses. From then on 
they ain’t no holding you back. 

In a few weeks you’re battling with the 
frau over the seven of diamonds she didn’t 
hold for the last trick, not taking for no 
excuse the fact that she didn’t have it to start 
with. A month more and you’ve quit apol- 

69 


Eight Clubs, Doubled 

igizing to the good players for being new 
at the game and started raising merry heck 
if you ain’t paired off with the gal that 
wrote the book. The curtain will now de¬ 
scend until the end of this line to denote 
the passing of a year. 

By this time you’re ready to smack any¬ 
body in the kisser that even thinks of think¬ 
ing that stud and seven-up and my-junk 
is to be compared with auction. The way 
you got it figured out now, poker and them 
low games stacks up against bridge like a 
Alabama cotton-picker does against the 
family of a early Manhattan whiskey ped¬ 
dler when it comes to sociable standing at 
Newport News. 

About now, too, you throws back your 
head and laughs hearty when some poor 
bobo tries to show you up by springing 
Whitehead or Work or one of them sharks. 
It’s a kinda forced chortle at first, but with 
practise you can get it down so good and 
natural that the lad you been arguing with’ll 
sob hisself home, throw all his bridge books 
outa the window and quote you all around 
the town, when they is any disputes. 

70 


Eight Clubs, Doubled 


Maybe auction ain’t affected you boys 
and girls that way; but I don’t make no bo¬ 
nuses about it. I ain’t monkeyed with the 
game for more’n six months before I was 
giving the rules the razz and thinking of 
writing some of my own. As a matter of 
facts, I did write a coupla articles on bridge 
in the which I pulled some fancy stunts, the 
fanciest being getting ’em printed. Just 
how much I actually know about the pas¬ 
times you’ll find out before you gets through 
with this piece, if ever. 

I’m walking down Broadway a week 
or so ago, giving the sights a treat, when 
I bumps into Harry Hooper, a lad I 
used to play around with. Harry and me is 
kinda related by marriage, him having 
hooked up with the step-daughter of the sky 
pilot that was gonna hitch me and my 
misses, before we changed our mind and let 
a J. P. knot the tie. 

“Well, well, you mangy coyote,” says he. 
“I hears you has become a bridge expert.” 

“I has my following,” I comes back, mod¬ 
est. “You play much?” 

“Quite a bit,” he answers. 

7 1 


Eight Clubs, Doubled 

“Like it now,” I goes on, just to keep the 
talk a-going. 

“Kinda,” he tells me. “I take a hand 
over at the club every so often.” 

“Has that ball and chain of your’n 
doubled any more passes lately?” says I. 

The question gives us both the grins, re¬ 
minding us like it does of a wild-eyed rub¬ 
ber me and him and our fraus hooked up in 
some time back when was neighbors. It 
sure was a wow of a laugh. 

Me and Jenny—that’s the monicker of 
Hooper’s hen—was playing together that 
night against my anchor and Harry, on 
the account of the misses not yet having re¬ 
sumed talking to me after the game of the 
evening before. Jen had been taking les¬ 
sons from some shark and was full up and 
bubbling over with new rules and trick stuff 
she’d learned. As a matter of facts, she 
didn’t know no more about auction than a 
deaf-mute Digger Indian knows about yo- 
deling in the original Swiss. 

Well, along about the middle of the out¬ 
rage, Harry deals hisself a rotten hand and 
passes. I draws for myself the kinda mitt 
72 


Eight Clubs, Doubled 


you wouldn’t even wish on your worstest 
enemy—they ain’t nothing in it higher’n a 
nine spot—so I says, jovial,—“I’ll double 
that.” 

The misses also does a Pippa, and I’m 
hoping Jenny’ll call it a day by heaving her 
hand into the deck but she don’t. She 
studies her fist of cards deep, looks worried 
and everything and finally comes to bat with 
“two diamonds.” Seeing we ain’t got a 
thing on the score and she’s the fourth 
bidder, I considers that a cuckoo come-out 
and glares my opinions. 

“All right, gal,” says I, laying down the 
dummy and getting up. “I ain’t got the 
heart to watch you. If you gets even a half 
a trick outta my hand, I’ll walk around the 
room on my eyebrow, balancing a grand 
piano on each toe.” 

I goes out on the porch, and when I comes 
back they is eleven tricks stacked up neat 
in front of Hooper and I loses my 
tempers. 

“What’s the idea,” I yelps, “of bidding 
fourth hand when you ain’t got nothing?” 

“I bid the best I had,” she snaps back, 

73 


Eight Clubs, Doubled 

“and that was jack four times of diamonds. 
What-” 

“But why,” I cuts in, “did you bid 
a-tall?” 

“I hadda take you outta the double, 
didn’t I?” she answers, sharp. 

“What double?” I gasps. 

“Didn’t you double Harry?” she inquires. 
“And don’t I have to take you outta original 
double of one?” 

“Know what Harry bid?” I asks. 

“I don’t remember,” mumbles Jenny, 
“but-” 

“He passed,” I explains, “and I doubled 
the pass, kidding. Anyways, what made 
you think your favorite husband only bid 
one? How do you know he didn’t start out 
with five spades?” 

“He’s too much of a gentleman,” blazes 
Jenny, and that’s that. 

Me and Hooper is walking along yarn¬ 
ing over that and other plays when he gets 
a idea. 

“Dink,” says he, “you don’t look so busy. 
How about drifting over to the club 
with me and having a few rubbers? I 
74 



Eight Clubs, Doubled 


ain’t never hooked up with no experts.” 

I don’t tell him that that ain’t the half of 
it, but not having nothing to do for a coupla 
hours, I agrees to go along. I don’t figure 
Harry is such a howling she-wolf at the 
game nor the lads he travels with, and with 
a even split of the papers they is a chance I 
can keep the expert stall a going with his 
gang. 

Hooper grabs off a pair of bozos and 
pretty soon we is at it. Me and a guy by 
the name of Sweeney starts off, while Harry 
gets for a partner a bird monickered Treffs. 
When I is introduced as Dink O’Day, I no¬ 
tices Sweeney and Treffs look at me kinda 
scared and respectable, but nothing ain’t 
said. 

The game is even for a while. The aces 
and the pictures move around like Tam¬ 
many floaters and we all get ’em in our pre¬ 
cincts in the first hour. 

They is a coupla arguments but as soon as 
I puts a oar in they stops. I guess if I’da 
told those lads that it was all right to lead 
away from a king, provided you was sure it 
would block your partner, it woulda gone 

75 


Eight Clubs, Doubled 

over. Anyways, that’s the pop-eyed way 
the boys seem to listen to me. 

Well, I finally picks up a hand that looks 
like it was dealt by a sharper outta the ice¬ 
box. They is eleven clubs, with five hon¬ 
ors, the ace of hearts and the ace of spades. 
Outside of that it was a perfect thirty-six 
bust. 

Just to tease the lads along, I bids three 
clubs; Sweeney and Harry passes butTreffs 
comes to life with “four diamonds.” 

“Five clubs,” says I. 

“Five diamonds,” he barks back. 

“Just to treat my hand right,” I remarks, 
“I’ll make it six.” 

“Six,” comes back Treffs. 

“And one,” I announces, jaunty. “Seven 
clubs.” 

Hooper and Sweeney give me the wide- 
eye but I just smiles. I got it figured that 
Treffs is loaded with diamonds the way I is 
with clubs, but I, anyways, is got a side ace 
on him. I can’t get myself to thinking the 
bird’s got twelve trumps. It just ain’t in 
the cards unless the whole thing’s a frame- 
up, and it ain’t that because I dealt the mess 
76 


Eight Clubs , Doubled 


myself. Treffs don’t say nothing for a min¬ 
ute, then he says quiet, 

“Seven diamonds.” 

“Wait a minute,” I yelps, just as the 
play’s about to start. Without no think¬ 
ing, outside of the facts that the rubber 
is slipping away and my bear of a 
hand’s not gonna be worth a hoot in hades, 
I shouts: 

“Eight clubs.” 

“You mean double, don’t you,” suggests 
Harry. 

“No, I don’t,” I shoots out. “I mean 
eight clubs.” 

“Eight!” gasps Treffs. “My dear O’Day, 
you can’t, you know.” 

“Who says so?” I asks. 

“For the simple reason,” explains Swee¬ 
ney, who is a blah-brain, anyways, “they is 
only seven possible tricks. You can’t bid 
more-” 

“Show me the rule,” I snaps, “that says I 
can’t bid ‘eight’?” 

“Perhaps,” admits Treffs, “they ain’t no 
rule about it, but it’s absurd.” 

“They is a lotta absurd bids,” says I, “and 

77 



Eight Clubs, Doubled 


if I’m willing to take a set, who’s 
gonna-” 

“Let O’Day play it for fun,” cuts in 
Harry, “just to see what he’s got.” 

“I don’t have to play it,” I tells him. 
“Look ’em over,” and I flops the hand. 

“All right,” says Treffs. “You got a 
slam, right enough, and I’d ’a got set a 
couple, but where do you get off? You’re 
down a hundred. Of course, you’d expect 
to be doubled?” 

“Of course,” I answers, “but I ain’t really 
set none. When you count my sixty for 
honors and a hundred for a grand slam 


“Slam,” howls Treffs. “How in hell 
can you get a slam and a set in the same 
hand?” 

“Look up the rules, boy,” says I, “and 
you’ll find seven tricks over the book is a 
slam, a grand slam.” 

“What do you think of this?” asks Treffs, 
of a bird that’s just walked over from a 
other table. “This feller thinks he can bid 
eight,” and he explained the hand. 

“It ain’t possible,” answers the bobo. 

78 



Eight Clubs, Doubled 

“You sure there’s a rule against it?” I 
inquires. 

“No,” he says slow, “I ain’t. I hear Dink 
O’Day is around the club some place. 
Why don’t you ask him?” 


79 





















PUNK PUNGS 

i 

I T’S getting so that nothing, the which 
is home-grown, is worth one hoot with 
the hoot monde in America. The 
swell giggle-frills and finale-hoofers snags 
their dance steps from South American 
barrel-houses; doll rags ain’t no good unless 
they has been flashed first by a French cro¬ 
quette on the Rue-de-la-Pay-as-you-enter; a 
show is gotta be gargled in Russia to get the 
prominent coin at the gate and the stuff for 
a bun comes from bunny Scotland. All of 
this has been Columbused before and I ain’t 
wise-wheezing nothing new, but it ain’t 
until me and the frau is settled down at 
Doughmore-on-the-Sound that I notices 
particular how us hundred percenters is 
flopping for the foreign dew-dudes. It 
only takes a coupla weeks to get the slant. 
Around the club, where we bumps off most 
of our time, teapots is called sammywares, 

81 


Punk Pungs 


a quick shot in the arm before chow is a 
aperistiff, and the lad that runs the fodder 
department of the joint is a matrons de ho¬ 
tel. If you don’t happen to know a waiter’s 
name, you don’t call him Jack, like we used 
to at the Fly-Speck Lunch or the Greasy 
Spoon down on the levee; you call him Car- 
son, that being, I understands, the name of a 
English family that’s turned out classy 
napkin-flippers for a lotta hundred years. 
Just like the Flannigans has always been 
grand traffic cops, and the Schmidts demons 
at the delicatess. 

I got as much right in the Doughmore 
dump as a clam’s got in a restaurant chow¬ 
der, but like I told you lads before I was 
drug there by the misses on the account of 
her sidekickers, the Magruders, having 
busted into the place through their Uncle 
Jake, an old coot who’s got enough jack to 
pay all the bricklayers in the union what 
they think they oughta get for a day’s work 
and have enough left over to buy a whole 
bin of the kinda coal that burns. For a 
while I does everything I can to frame 
an exit outta the deadfall, but the wife is 
82 


Punk Pungs 


hipped on the place and they ain’t a leave 
stirring. So being stuck, I sticks. 

I ain’t one of these particular guys and 
could get by even comfortable sleeping with 
a wet dog in a swamp, but anywheres them 
Magruders is is too tough for me. If Jim 
and Liz was to be swimming down at At¬ 
lantic City and I was to be wading in the 
water at Liverpool, I’d get a cramp from 
being in the same ocean with ’em. That’s 
the way them blah-babies affects me. So 
you can easy imagine my joys when Kate 
crashes into my afternoon nap one day with 
the news that the Magruder hen has came. 

“Lizzie’s calling,” says the frau. “Get 
up.” 

“Let her call,” I yelps. “She ain’t never 
got anything but a four-flush.” 

“Such being the cases,” comes back the 
handcuffs, “you must be crazy to see her. 
She’s all excited about something.” 

“I guess,” I remarks, climbing off the flop, 
“somebody’s finally got it through her head 
that the Maine's been sunk, and Jim’s gone 
to town to enlist.” 

I curses into my shoes, damns my collar 

83 


Punk Pungs 


on and grumbles into the living room. 
Kate and Liz is ruining a neighbor when I 
busts in, but seeing me, they leaves her run¬ 
ning around without no reputation on and 
switches the subject. 

“I got wonderful news,” says the Magru- 
der disease. 

“Where’s Jim?” I asks. “He been hurt?” 

“Hurt!” gasps Lizzie. “What makes 
you think that?” 

“Nothing,” I answers, “don’t have to 
make me think that way, but I don’t see him 
around and you was just saying you had 
wonderful-” 

“Dink’s here now,” cuts in the wife, slip¬ 
ping me a scowl. “Out with it, Lizzie. 
What you got on your mind?” 

“Mah jongg,” whispers the total loss, and 
steps back, mysterious, like if she had just 
let us in on the secrets of them Spinks. I’m 
the first to get over it. 

“J on gg mah,” I replies. “If the sister is 
in distress and will indicate by the proper 
signs and-” 

“What you talking about?” interrupts 
Kate. 

84 



Punk Pungs 


“Ain’t that a pass word?” I asks, turn¬ 
ing to Lizzie in surprise. “No? Funny. 
Sounds just like the one we used to give the 
guard at the outer gate in the Loyal Order 
of Ring-Tailed Bearcats. I remember as 
if it was yesterday.” 

“See if you can remember it to-morrow,” 
suggests the frau, “when nobody ain’t here 
to listen. Tell me about May Young, 
Lizzie. Is that the woman-” 

“Mah jongg,” cuts in the Magruder hen, 
“is a game the which all the swells is taking 
up and so is we.” 

“What is it?” I asks. “A new kinda 
bridge?” 

“I don’t know much about it,” admits 
Lizzie, “but Jim says it ain’t no more like 
bridge than golf is like casino. It comes 
from China, and it’s so swell that they don’t 
let nobody play it over there excepting them 
mandolins.” 

“What,” I inquires, “would happen if 
somebody should pick it out on a banjo?” 

“I ain’t talking about them kinda mando¬ 
lins,” explains Lizzie. “A mandolin in 
China is like a duke or a count, and they 

85 


Punk Pungs 

is the only ones that is allowed to play this 
mah jongg. The common people over 
there—the collies, Jim says, they is called 
—has their heads chopped off if they is 
caught with the game. Besides, the sets 
cost so much that only nice people can get 
them.” 

“Nice people, eh?” I remarks. “I sup¬ 
pose, of course, they wouldn’t sell none to a 
bootlegger or a dope spreader. Does this 
my-junk layout you is talking about take 
brains, Lizzie, or is it one of them pastimes 
you could learn easy?” 

“Jim says,” answers she, “that it’s 
harder’n bridge and that pretty soon no¬ 
body’ll be playing auction no more except¬ 
ing the lower classes. I’m crazy to play 
it.” 

“And quit bridge?” I asks. 

“Yes,” says Liz. “That’s getting so 
common.” 

“I gotta hand it to you, gal,” says I. 
“Here you been spending, at the leastest, 
five years at the game and you is just getting 
to the point where you is beginning to sus¬ 
pect that two hearts is a better bid than one 
86 


Punk Pungs 


club, when you ups and leaves it flat. It 
takes nerve to let all that work go to waste 
and take up with a Chink-” 

“I’m sorry,” cuts in the Magruder fish- 
brain, “that I ever learned auction.” 

“Liz,” says I, “you remind me of a feller 
I knows that oncet worked half a day in a 
drug store when he was a kid. He tells me 
he’s sorry he learned the damned business.” 

“Why?” she wants to know. 

“Dink!” snaps the wife. “We ain’t in¬ 
terested none in them gutter-snap friends 
of yourn. Tell me some more about this 
here jah-mong game.” 

“Mah jongg,” says Lizzie. “We is 
gonna to play it this afternoon. Sallie Proc¬ 
tor bought a set and is got a teacher coming 
to her house at four o’clock—a real Chinese 
mandolin, that knows all about it. We 
has all been invited to come—you and me 
and Jim and him.” 

“Count him out,” I barks. “I know too 
many games now, and besides, I been neg¬ 
lecting my lotto and euchre something 
shameful. I wouldn’t think of falling for 
no new stufif until I catches up with the 

s? 



Punk Pungs 

latest wrinkles in them blooded sports. 
I’m surprised at you, anyways, Liz.” 

“Me?” she gulps. “What about?” 

“The idea,” says I, “of a fine Christian 
woman like you is, going in for something 
invented by a heathen Chink. Where is 
your morals? It may be a good game like 
you says, but the road to hell is paved with 
good inventions.” 

“I don’t see no harm,” begins Lizzie. 

“That,” I explains, “is because you don’t 
understand these slant-eyed babies. They 
is a crafty lot. First they’ll get everybody 
to playing this mah jongg, after the which 
they’ll ease in other Chinese costumes, like 
hitting the pipe and the such, and before 
you knows it you’ll be burning josh-sticks 
and praying to this lad Confusion them 
yeller kids is so cuckoo about. You know 
what it says in the Bible, don’t you? East 
is west and west is east, and never the trains 
shall meet. You gotta watch them rice 
eaters. Give ’em an L and they’ll swipe 
the whole alphabet. You gals can do what 
you want but I ain’t gonna do no gambling 
with my soul. Count me out.” 


Punk Pungs 


Lizzie is stupe enough to take this hop 
of mine half serious, but not so the misses. 

“You maybe has been hearing somebody 
talk,” she remarks to the Magruder wren, 
“but nothing ain’t been said. Dink always 
gives his tongue its daily dozen about this 
time of the afternoon. Four o’clock, did 
you say?” 

The wife’s a little slow dressing herself 
up and me down, but we manages to get to 
the Proctors’ on time. Yeh, “we” is right. 
I ain’t the sorta guy that’d let his woman 
go alone to a place where they is a 
Chinaman. 

II 

They is about a dozen folks at the 
mah-jongg party, including Jim Magru¬ 
der and his Uncle Jake. The old boy’s 
a pretty good scout and I high-signs him off 
to a corner. 

“Where’s the Chink?” I asks. 

“He’ll be here in a coupla minutes,” says 
he. “You wild to learn this game too?” 

“Yeh,” I comes back, “I’m crazy about 

89 


Punk Pungs 

it— just about as crazy as I’d be to play 
ring-around-a-rosie in a snow-storm with¬ 
out no clothes on.” 

“Well,” he asks, “what are you doing 
here then, Dink?” 

“Dink O’Day ain’t here,” says I. “The 
guy you’re talking to is Kate O’Day’s hus¬ 
band. What do you know about this mah 
jongg?” 

“I seen it played oncet,” answers Uncle 
Jake. “It’s a kinda combination of rummy, 
fancy expressions, dominoes* and bricklay¬ 
ing. There’s a little of everything in it, 
and not much of nothing. It’s a sorta 
Hoyle hash.” 

About this time Sallie Proctor drifts over 
our way. She’s one of them gushers that 
nobody ain’t been able to cap. 

“Oh, you wicked man you,” she spouts 
at me. “Have you come to get a moon 
from the bottom of the sea?” 

“I wouldn’t do it for nobody but you,” 
I replies, gallant. “If you’ll wait a 
minute I’ll go home and get my diving 
suit.” 

“Come to think of it,” says the Proctor 


90 


Punk Pungs 

pain, “I believe I’d rather have a plum 
blossom in unseasonable time.” 

“You can have anything I ain’t got,” I 
comes back, and she giggles herself away. 
I turns to Uncle Jake. 

“Does her husband know?” I asks. 
“Shame, ain’t it?” 

“Don’t worry,” laughs the old boy. “She 
ain’t lost her mind. Them’s mah jongg 
expressions she was pulling.” 

“Do you pick flowers in this game?” I 
inquires. “And go diving into the Sound 
after moons?” 

“Those,” explains Uncle Jake, “is just 
names for different kinda hands. Getting 
a moon outta the sea is something like filling 
an inside straight.” 

“I see,” says I; “and what’s the plum 
blossom?” 

“That’s the five of dots,” he tells me, “and 
getting that baby when you needs it is just 
about the same as picking up a fourth ace 
against a coupla pat hands. Get that book 
over there on the table and wise yourself 
up.” 

I starts reading and don’t get no further 

9i 


Punk Pungs 

than to find out that “mah jongg” is the 
Chinkish word for chippy-bird, when in 
paddles the bobo that’s gonna learn us the 
game. He’s all silked out like the opium 
king in the mellerdrama; you know, the lad 
that don’t do nothing but ring a bell to have 
eighty-six people murdered and Bertha, the 
adding-machine girl, kidnaped and brung 
to him through a trap door. 

Sallie Proctor gives us all a knockdown. 
The guy’s name is Sing High Lee and from 
what she tells us about him he’s some spuds 
in China, being three or four laps anyways 
ahead of the emperor, when it comes to so¬ 
cial standing. He talks English nearly so 
perfect as me. 

“How’d they manage to hook a classy boy 
like him?” I asks Uncle Jake. 

“Twenty fish per the hour,” answers he. 

“You mean,” says I, surprised, “that swell 
naboob is doing this for dough?” 

“What’s funny about that?” comes back 
Magruder. “Nowadays, you could easy 
get a grand duke to look after your furnace 
and a countess to wash the dog. Since the 
war, titles is a drag on the market. I hears 
92 


Punk Pungs 

lots of these Chinos is cleaning up teaching 
this mah jongg. It’s the thing—this learn¬ 
ing a Chinese game from a Chinese.” 

“Yeh,” says I, “and I suppose in Dough- 
more you’d get a old maid to show you old 
maid, a iceman to tip you off to freeze-out 
and a sea captain with a mouth full of to¬ 
bacco juice to explain spit-in-the-ocean.” 

“Come on,” says Uncle Jake. “The cur¬ 
tain’s going up.” 

The Proctor dame’s put a box on the table 
and motions to the gang to crowd around. 
Then Sing High Lee opens up the layout 
and dumps out a whole mess of little 
blocks that looks like dominoes, excepting 
that they is marked up like laundry tickets. 
They is made half outta bamboo and half 
outta the heads of bush-league ball players. 
All the numbers and such is on the ivory 
side. 

Besides the blocks they is a flock of sticks 
with different kinda dots which is a China¬ 
man’s idea of chips. A guy that makes a 
killing in this game looks like he’s got his 
winter supply of kindling in front of him. 
They is also a coupla dice and a dewfligger 

93 


Punk Pungs 

with four tablets in it which tells you what 
kinda wind you is, if you insists on knowing. 
It’s just about as necessary to the game as a 
red joker in a blue bridge deck, and is only 
in the set for them kinda blanks that can’t 
remember which side their right hand was 
on the last time they seen it. 

Sing squats four of the folks down at the 
table—Lizzie is one of ’em—and starts a 
frame of this mah jongg. The rest of us 
stands around like a chorus of kibitzers lis¬ 
tening in. In about ten minutes I’m jerry. 
The game ain’t nothing but rummy dressed 
up in a seventy-five-dollar suit of Chinese 
doll rags, and with a lotta hurrah and side 
stuff that ain’t really got no more to do with 
the case than the flowers is got to do with the 
blooming spring in Tra-la. It’s like sitting 
down at a table all cluttered up with knifes 
and forks and spoons and fancy plates and 
then getting nothing served to you excepting 
a ham sandwich. I learns afterwards that 
half of the motions you go through in this 
sketch is to fix it so nobody can cheat, these 
yellow boys being so suspicious of one the 
the other they wouldn’t even play with their 
94 


Punk Pungs 

mothers, for nothing a side, unless she rolled 
her sleeves up and cut her finger nails close. 

Like in rummy, the idea in this mah 
jongg is to fill up your mitt with threes of 
a kind and sequences, only instead of deal¬ 
ing out cards, they stack up these little 
blocks I been telling you about, in a square, 
and you pulls ’em out one at a time. Each 
come-on in the game gets thirteen to start 
off, and when he’s ready to flop ’em, he yelps 
“Mah jongg” and cashes. They is discards 
as in rummy. When you picks one up that 
gives you a three-card straight flush you 
says “Chow.” If it makes three of a kind 
you calls it “Pung.” And that’s about all 
they is to it. They is a few trimmings, like 
winds and dragons and seasons, and a lotta 
goofy expressions like “robbing a koung” 
and “the major quadruple joy” which 
sounds like a mixed drink with a mule’s 
hind hoofs in it, but take it for me, the 
game’s as simple as I says. When you first 
pipes a look at the mess of stuff that goes 
with it, you figure it’ll take at least forty- 
eight years just to learn how to open the 
box; after you’ve played it for forty-eight 

9S 


Punk Pungs 

minutes, you’re ready to spot the guy that 
built the set three east winds and a whole 
jag of plum blossoms. 

Of course, this don’t apply to Liz. It 
took that wit-nit a coupla years to get it 
through her conk that they wasn’t hardly no 
difference between the three and the trey of 
spades, and her think-blank don’t work no 
faster with mah jongg. Twenty smackers 
per the hour ain’t no money a-tall for trying 
to learn that hen a new game. Like most 
squash-brains she don’t pay no attention to 
what’s being said, and pretty soon she’s got 
the poor Chink run ragged with the kinda 
simp questions a two-year-old kid would be 
spanked on an empty stomach for asking. 
All on a sudden she bleats “Mah jongg” 
and Sing tells her to face ’em up for a look- 
see. 

“Do I have to?” she asks. 

“Yeh,” he answers. 

“Don’t you believe me?” comes back Liz¬ 
zie, sorta huffish. 

“How could a miserable worm like me,” 
bows the Chink, “doubt a high-born dame 
like you is?” 

96 


Punk Pungs 


“They always talks like that/’ whispers 
Uncle Jake to me. “Running theirselves 
down and slipping the oil to the other 
baby.” 

Everybody else starts yelling for Lizzie 
to show her mitt and she finally plops ’em 
down. I don’t blame her none for not 
wanting to expose the layout. For the 
benefits of you lowbrows that don’t know 
nothing about mah jongg, lucky stiffs, I 
don’t mind explaining that the Magruder 
frill ain’t got no more in her hand than she 
got in her head. 

“Don’t I win?” she asks. 

“Is an insect,” bows Sing again, “to look 
at the sun and say its light is not good?” 

“Just the same,” I cuts in, tired of this 
woozy talk, “what she’s got ain’t worth a 
whoop, is it?” 

“I weep at the grave of my aunt’s sisters,” 
says the Chink. “For three thousand years 
such a combination has been worthless, but 
maybe we been wrong. If the daughter of 
joy-—” 

“Oh, hell!” I yelps. “You ain’t got a 
thing there, Liz.” 


97 


Punk Pungs 


“How do you know?” she snaps. 

“Ain’t the mandolin said so?” I comes 
back. “If the daughter of Dinny Kee¬ 
gan-” 

The wife pulls me off and in a little while 
they is got the game going again, though 
Lizzie is still giving the rules the razz. 
Pretty soon one of the players mah jonggs 
on the up and up, and a new gang sits down. 
Me and Uncle Jake is among ’em. 

I don’t know whether I told you before, 
but the first stunt in this pastime is to build 
up the walls. You takes thirty-six of the 
blocks—each guy does—and you builds ’em 
up in twos, which makes eighteen stacks on 
each side. I’m about in the middle of the 
job when something I thinks of makes me 
grin. 

“What’s the joke?” asks Uncle Jake. 

“Nothing,” says I, “only I was wondering 
what’d happen if a bricklayer was to be 
playing this game and just as he got about 
halfway through the wall the five-o’clock 
whistle should blow.” 

“You can play this after five, can’t you?” 
asks Lizzie. 

98 


Punk Pungs 


I happens to catch the eye of Sing, and 
winks. Much to my surprises he slowly 
winks back. In a flash I’m wise. 

Ill 

When I first piped the Chinaman I kinda 
thought the face was familiar, but these slit- 
eyes look so much alike I wasn’t so sure. 
Besides, the rig he’s wearing threw me off. 
I never saw no rags like them before on 
Charlie Bang—his name ain’t no more Sing 
High Lee then mine’s Moishe Murphy— 
but the way he looks at me when he winks is 
the tip-off. Any doubts I got after that is 
shot by the scar Charlie’s got on his upper 
lip, where a hatchet heaver bounced a blade 
offa him. 

I used to know Charlie pretty good when 
he was running the fantan game in back of 
Wong Woof’s chop-susie dump, and oncet 
when he got pinched for violating the law 
against holding out on the coppers, I went to 
the front for him. As a matter of facts, 
Bang was born in Frisco and ain’t no more 
a mandolin than I’m a orchestra. 


99 


Punk Pungs 


During the rest of the time he palavers 
about this mah jongg junk I don’t let on 
nothing, but when he starts to beat it I fol¬ 
lows after him like I is going to ask him 
some questions about the game. He’s got 
a buzz boat waiting for him outside and he 
motions me to hop in. 

“Well, Charlie,” says I, “pretty soft.” 

“Beautiful soft,” grins the Chink. “You 
no put no fish with claws in play piece?” 

“What?” I comes back. “Oh, no. Don’t 
worry. I won’t crab your act. Beats fan- 
tan, eh?” 

“Me so say,” says Charlie Bang. 
“Twenty dollars hour. No give half to 
policemans and-” 

“Is there enough suckers,” I cuts in, “to 
make it pay out? How many fish’ll cough 
up twenty iron men a hour to learn 
rummy?” 

“Plenty many,” says he. “Work now 
five, six hours every day. More want me. 
Cheap Chinamen get ten dollars hour. 
Twenty for mandolin with mandolin talk.” 

“Is that the way mandolins dress and 
act?” I asks. 


TOO 


Punk Fungs 


“It so say,” shrugs Charlie, “in Amer¬ 
ican book I read. I never been China. 
Everybody now crazy about mah jongg, 
everybody—what you call clocks which 
make funny noise?” 

“Cuckoo,” I tells him. “You come back 
here again?” 

“Four times more,” says Bang. “Lady 
buy five learnings.” 

“Good,” I remarks. “You do me a 
favor?” 

“If can do,” he comes back. 

“Remember Mrs. Magruder?” I asks. 
“You know—the lady that asked you all 
them questions—the one that tried to mah 
jongg out on her looks.” 

“I know,” says he. “You mean smart 
woman—smart in feet.” 

“I wouldn’t even go that far,” I remarks, 
“but that’s the hen I got in mind. I want, 
Charlie, that you should get kicked in on 
her. Make her presents. Give her the 
calf eye. Talk pretty and-” 

Bang cuts in with a mess of questions and 
yeeps about him having a coupla wifes al¬ 
ready and being afraid Jim Magruder’ll 

ioi 



Punk Pungs 

knock him for a block of josh-houses and 
the such, but I got a scheme for getting even 
with Lizzie Magruder for dragging me 
and Kate to this Doughmore dump, in par¬ 
ticular, and staying alive, in general, so I 
keeps after the Chino. After talking to 
him about fifteen minutes more, during the 
which I reminds him of what I done for 
him oncet, and also threatens to push him 
down into the cheap-John ten-dollar-an- 
hour class by blowing the works about the 
mandolin bunk, Charlie weakens. 

“I try,” says he, “but I don’t know noth¬ 
ing about these love makings?” 

“Roll your own, kid,” I tells him. “It’s 
the same trick in Peking or Peekskill. If 
you want some dope on the American plan, 
buy one of them books by Elmer Glyn.” 

When I gets back to our hut, Lizzie’s 
there. Jim’s out on the links with the other 
sausages. 

“What you and Sing High Lee been talk¬ 
ing about?” asks the Magruder ache. 

“You mostly,” I growls. “The flatfoot’s 
got the batty idea that they is something 
wonderful-” 


102 


Punk Fungs 

“Does he think I play mah jongg good?” 
she cuts in, eager. 

“That’s where the batty part of it comes 
in,” I answers. “From where I was sitting 
it didn’t look like you was learning the 
game any faster than a deaf and dummy 
would learn to yodel, but the Chink says he 
never ain’t seen nobody get inside of a deep 
game quicker’n you.” 

“I always,” smiles Lizzie, “had a knack 
for them Oriental things.” 

“Maybe,” I comes back, “that’s why you 
is so blah on what’s going on in the Acci¬ 
dent. Anyways, Charlie says——” 

“Charlie,” interrupts the wife. “Who’s 
he?” 

“That,” I explains quick, “is the English 
for Sing. Just like Pietro in wop is Bill 
over in this country.” 

“How comes it,” asks Kate, “that he 
picked on you to tell what a fine player Liz¬ 
zie is?” 

“That’s simple,” I answers. “He 
thought I was her husband.” 

“He coulda easy got that idea,” admits 
the frau, “from the rough way you talked 

103 


Punk Pungs 

to her at the Proctors’. I still don’t 
see-” 

“In China,” I goes on, “things is alto¬ 
gether different from the way they is here. 
In America, for example, if you admires a 
skirt—and I don’t mind telling you they is 
other things besides Lizzie’s mah-jongg 
work Charlie admires—the last boy in the 
world you’d tell it to would be the jane’s 
meal ticket, but ’tain’t so east of Suet. 
Everything’s just twisted from the way it 
oughta be. For examples, they wears 
white for mourning, they pays sawbones for 
keeping ’em well and docks the doc when 
they gets sick, and such dropsy-turvy ideas. 
Can you imagine anybody but a cuckoo 
Chink thinking Lizzie’s good looking and 
intelligent?” 

“What’d he say about me?” asks the Ma- 
gruder gal, eager. 

“Aw, what’s the use?” I grumbles. 
“When it comes to tastes and brains in 
China, the higher the fewer. Here’s a guy 
from the swellest family over there, with 
oodles of jack—he’s just doing this mah 
jongg stuff for one of his pet’s charities—a 
104 


Punk Pungs 


lad that’s been all over the world, and who 
do you think he picks for the classiest frail 
he’s seen so far? It,” I finishes with dis¬ 
gusts. 

“I was so embarrassed,” giggles Lizzie. 
“He kept looking at me all the times.” 

Can you defeat that for a total loss? I 
guess Charlie was looking at her a lot, won¬ 
dering who left the door open long enough 
for her to get in, and how anybody with so 
little of the gray could think fast enough to 
breathe regular, but I’m satisfied. Things 
is going the way I wants them. 

“Ain’t you afraid,” I asks, “that Jim’ll 
get jealous?” 

“Let him,” says Liz. “It ain’t my fault 
if a mandolin likes my styles, is it?” 

“In this case,” I tells her, “I knows it 
ain’t.” 

IV 

Charlie acts like I told him to. When 
we gets together the next day at the Proc¬ 
tors’ for another shot at this mah jongg the 
Chink puts on like they ain’t nobody else 

105 


Punk Pungs 

in the room excepting Lizzie. Every time 
he starts to explain something his almond 
lamps rests on that minus zero subtracted 
from nothing. He talks right at her, and 
the rest of us studnuts of the game ain’t 
nothing but a flock of buttinskis cutting in 
on a private party. 

Liz plays right up to him, too, slipping 
him the blush and the droopy eyelid every 
now and then. I pipes Jim at the other end 
of the table, and he ain’t looking so happy. 
I drifts over his way. 

“How you like this skit?” I asks him. 

“It ain’t so bad,” says he, “but what’s the 
idea of taking more’n one lesson in this 
stuff?” 

“Well,” I tells him, “I hears it ain’t so 
easy like it looks and-” 

“I ain’t neither,” cuts in Magruder, turn¬ 
ing a mean eye toward the Chink. Char¬ 
lie’s just leaned over and put his hand on 
Lizzie’s to keep her from grabbing the 
wrong discard. 

“The pretty lotus blossom is maybe 
right,” I hears him tell her, “but the dirt 
beneath her feet suggests that you do it so.” 
106 


Punk Pungs 

“Fresh rat!” mutters Jim, but I don’t 
hear him say nothing. 

“I was talking to Sing High Lee yester¬ 
day,” I remarks, casual, “and the boy’s 
stuck on Doughmore. He tells me he’s 
thinking of selling out his pagodas in 
Shanghai and taking a place here.” 

“Let him,” growls Magruder. “I’m 
about fed up with this joint, anyways. I 
got half a mind to beat it back to town this 
week. Believe me, I ain’t gonna live no 
place where they don’t draw no colored 
lines.” 

While they ain’t been so much pulled at 
the Proctors’ between Charlie and Liz, I 
figures she musta filled up Jim the night 
before with a lotta bunk about what the 
Chino is supposed to have said to me about 
her. Personally, if I had a wife like her, 
I’d pay a guy’s taxi fare from one Portland 
to the other if he’d take her off my feet, 
but they ain’t no counting up tastes, and 
Magruder’s runs towards sour crab apples. 
I’m feeling good, though. Jim’s crack 
about giving Doughmore the look-around- 
now-for-the-nearest-exit act gives me, like 

107 


Punk Pungs 

us mah jonggers say, the major quadruple 
joy. 

After the session I pries Charlie loose 
from a talk he is having with Sallie Proctor 
and walks out with him, the lad looking 
back all the times at Lizzie. 

“How me do it?” he asks. 

“Fine!” says I. “Don Jewan and Young 
Lockingbar, the western cake-muncher, 
don’t have nothing on you a-tall when it 
comes to flashing the googlish eye. You’re 
there with the ladies, boy.” 

“Me no like,” comes back Charlie. 
“She so—what you say when no can 
talk?” 

“Dumb,” I tells him. “Ain’t she pretty, 
though?” 

“Ain’t, yes,” he answers. “Me see one 
lady, pretty. She smart too. Me like.” 

“Never mind the others,” says I. “Your 
job is to be nice to the one I say.” 

Charlie plays ball. The rest of the les¬ 
sons he keeps on fussing with Lizzie, but I 
can see that his heart ain’t in the work. On 
the last day he brings her a present, a kinda 
stick that you use to push the walls into the 
108 



I WALKS OUT WITH HIM, THE LAD LOOKING BACK ALL THE TIMES 

at Lizzie. Page 108 . 






























H 









4 





















* 



















































i 





Punk Pungs 


square with. Jim, who’s been getting mad¬ 
der every session, finally boils over. 

“I’ll kill that Chink!” he yelps. 

“Lay off,” I advised him. “That buck’s 
got a hatchet up each sleeve, a coupla rings 
full of poison, and a knife under his hat. 
I got a idea he’d like nothing better than to 
bump you off. It’d make things easier for 
him.” 

“How do you mean?” asks Magruder. 
He’s kinda pale. 

“I ain’t saying,” I comes back, evasive, 
“but watch yourself—and Lizzie.” 

I’m out on the porch smoking when the 
class breaks up, and when I comes into the 
house to say by-by to Charlie, he ain’t there 
no more. I finds him outside in the gar¬ 
den, talking to the wife. He waves at me, 
gets into his car and buzzes off. 

“He been asking you about Lizzie?” I 
inquires. 

“Uh, huh,” says Kate. 

I takes a walk with Uncle Jake, they be¬ 
ing yet an hour before chow time. 

“I’m glad that Chinaman’s through,” 
says the old boy. 

109 


Punk Pungs 


“Why?” I asks. 

“Well,” answers he, “I didn’t like the 
way he was trying to make up with the 
women.” 

“You mean,” says I, “Lizzie Ma- 
gruder?” 

“Better not mention names,” he comes 
back. 

When I gets home Kate’s on the porch, 
reading, but she looks up at my cheery 
whistle. 

“Why so happy?” she asks. 

“All’s swell with the world,” I replies 
merrily, but the real why is that I got a 
grand ruction framed between Lizzie and 
Jim over the Chink’s present, the which 
will probably finish up with both of ’em 
beating it to the city. If they go we go too, 
Kate and Liz always pulling the you-and- 
me-both stuff. 

“What you reading?” I asks. “That’s a 
classy-looking book.” 

“It’s about mah jongg,” says the frau. 
“Isn’t the binding wonderful? Sing gave 
it to me.” 

“Who?” I inquires. 


no 


Punk Pungs 

“Sing High Lee,” comes back Kate. 
“Your friend Charlie.” 

“Oh,” says I. “Did he give one to all 
the women?” 

“I think not,” answers the misses. 
“Want to play a round before dinner?” 

“With what?” I wants to know. 

“I got a lovely set, with a fine table, and 
everything,” says she. “Sing sent them out 
to-day. Isn’t he just too lovely?” 

“Too lovely to live, damn his yellow 
hide!” I yelps. “He been making up to 
you?” 

“He’s a wonderful character,” returns 
Kate. “We’ve had some grand talks. He 
says I play good—*—” 

“I thought,” I cuts in kinda dazed, “him 
and Lizzie-” 

“You can always tell them nobilities,” 
goes on the frau. “They is so refined.” 

“Nobilities, hell!” I barks. “That baby 
ain’t nothing but a cheap Frisco Chink that 
used to get pinched once a week for run¬ 
ning a fantan game in Heeney’s Alley. 
Pung that off.” 

The frau looks surprised and is getting 

hi 



Punk Pungs 


ready to say something when Magruder 
and his Lizzie comes in. Jim’s collar is 
torn and he looks like he’s been thrown 
outta all-night saloon. 

“Let me wash up,” he mumbles. 

“What hospital’s the other bird in?” I 
asks. 

“That Chink,” answers Magruder, grim, 
“ain’t never coming back here to bother no 
more white women against their wills.” 

“Ain’t Jim brave?” gushes Lizzie. 

“Is a insect,” I answers with a bow, “to 
look at the sun and say that its light is not 
good?” 


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